Lights, fans, and ACs up and running throughout the day, irrespective of if someone is in the room, are common across households in India.
That is because most of us believe that “since I pay utility bills for it, let me decide what I should do with the power”.
UNSPLASH
Why we need energy literacy?
But what most of us don’t know about is the hidden cost of power generation.
India is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels to meet the country’s power needs and carbon emissions from them are the biggest contributor to global warming.
This realisation is the first step towards becoming climate conscious and changing one’s life.
This is what Chetan Singh Solanki, Professor at IIT Bombay and a campaigner for solar energy trying to do with this energy literacy programme.
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What is energy literacy?
Prof. Solanki, who is also the founder of the Energy Swaraj Foundation, believes that, like a driving licence required to drive a vehicle, all energy consumers should be energy literate.
“We are all users of energy, but I believe that we don’t know how to use it. Because if we had known, we would not have been facing climate change now. We are in this current situation because of the overuse and inefficient use of energy. That is why we need energy literacy,” Prof Solanki said.
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How to become energy literate?
According to him, not even 0.1 per cent of the Indian population is currently energy literate and this needs to change soon for the county to make progress in its effort to combat climate change and adopt renewable energy.
The energy literacy training is a free online course available in both English and Hindi that anyone can take.
“The energy literacy training has the purpose to provide a basic understanding of energy, its generation, and consumption, which every user of energy should have,” he said.
UNSPLASH
Prof. Solanki, who is on an 11-year-long journey across India to spread awareness about the climate crisis and solar power, said the idea of energy literacy training came from his interaction with people from all walks of life.
“All these years we were only focused on meeting our growing energy needs to increase our comfort. The policymakers were only focused on how to ensure the supply of coal and not bothered about the emissions from it and its aftereffects like climate change. Since we were focused on short term, we missed the bigger picture,” he said.
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How it works
The energy literacy training is divided into twelve modules which are 15 minutes each, focusing on several topics.
“The energy literacy programme tells people how much they use, where the energy come from, and how they can quantify the energy. The next step is to let people calculate their carbon footprint and how much it is contributing to climate change. The second part is about solutions, including switching to solar, efficient appliances, etc,” he explained.
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Since he designed the programme, Prof Solanki has tested it among people from all walks of life, both in urban and rural areas, and he said that the results have been encouraging.
“The biggest learning from this training, according to me is that we are all contributing to climate change and with this, we get a quantifiable sense of it. It also tells people the solutions for the problem,” he said.
PEXELS
Small changes with a big impact
Small changes in consumption patterns by individuals can play a big role in saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.
“We tend to keep the lights on even during the day when there is ample natural light. We should stop that. Not wearing ironed clothes, not taking bath with hot water, reducing the size of the refrigerator, stopping using ACs etc are some steps that may initially sound inconvenient, but can be taken by an individual to bring down his or her power consumption,” he said.
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