تجزیه و تحلیل روند در مصرف انرژی حمل و نقل مسافر و حمل و نقل بار در هند

This primary objective of this paper is to examine the causes for the change in energy consumption in the transport sector in India. The pattern of energy consumption and their causes for change are benchmarked against select countries. A mathematical model that decomposes changes in energy consumption to various factors has been used. The changes in the energy consumption are attributed to growth in transport volume, structural change or modal shift, and energy intensity. The analysis is conducted for passenger and freight transport separately. Results indicate that the growth in transport volume has been the main cause for increase in energy consumption for both passenger and freight transport in India despite the decline in energy intensity of various transport modes. Though not surprising for a growing economy like India, this poses a challenge for the future. Currently, India is a low carbon economy. However, the choices that the economy is making, as it is growing, are towards energy intensive options particularly in transportation and building sectors. There is a need for policy framework to steer the economy towards making appropriate choices that are environmentally sustainable and also do not jeopardize economic growth aspirations. In case of passenger transport, the trend is comparable with other countries studied in this paper (US, Canada, China, Japan, UK) except France. For freight transport, the contribution of the increase in transport volume to changes in energy consumption is far higher in India than that amongst the countries compared, though all countries except Japan have shown a positive contribution of increase in volume to the changes in energy consumption. The large contribution of the transport volume to the changes in passenger transport energy consumption is due to increasing shift towards personalized modes of transport (such as cars, two wheelers) in India and decrease in passenger occupancy per vehicle. The growth in freight transport energy consumption is a reflection of the high growth of the economy. The problem, however, is that a large part of freight is transported using road unlike that in some other benchmarked countries. Future policies aimed at containing energy consumption in the transport sector would need to focus on the modal structure which would require more use of rail for transportation of freight and public transportation systems for passenger transport. This would, however, require huge inefficiencies to be overcome before consumer choice shifts towards rail or public transportation system.

India is the third largest emitter of CO2 emissions after China and the United States (US), contributing more than 5% to the global emissions in 2009 (International Energy Agency, 2011). Though CO2 emissions on a per capita basis are well below the world average and per capita emissions in 2035 are projected to be still well below that in OECD member countries today (International Energy Agency, 2011), emissions are growing in absolute terms because of the rapidly rising energy consumption. In the current policy debate, notwithstanding the recent Prime Minister's National Action Plan on Climate Change, where economic growth objectives take precedence over any climate change agenda, it is imperative that for future sustainability country expands its economy at “diminishing rates of carbon intensity” (Rao, Sant, & Rajan, 2009). The Indian economy is growing at an average 7% over the last decade. The economic growth has, however, been inequitable benefitting largely the upper and middle income classes. Though it is important that economic growth continues, there is a need to strike a balance between the three prong objectives of development namely economic growth, equity and climate change, which current policies seem to ignore. At a macro level, the energy intensity (defined differently here from rest of the paper as energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product) is low and declining. However, trends such as high personalized passenger vehicle growth are tilting the balance towards an economy that is moving towards high energy consumption path.

Freight and passenger transport volumes are the major contributors to the growth in transport energy consumption in India. Despite progress in energy efficiency across most modes of transport, any gains from efficiency are negated as the modal choice is increasingly shifting towards roads. The trend is same in other countries such as UK, US, Canada and China. Japan and to some extent France show a slightly different trend because of the greater utilization of railways. The major reason for growth of passenger energy consumption in India is the increase in transport volume. This growth is a consequence of increasing urbanization and increased reliance on personal modes of transport which are road based. The total number of registered vehicles in the country has increased from about 50 million in 2000 to 99.6 million in 2007 (INCCA and MoEF GoI, 2010). Two wheelers have exhibited the maximum growth followed by cars (INCCA and MoEF GoI, 2010). Rising transport volumes are not surprising for a growing economy like India. But the problem lies in the fact that there has been no concerted effort to address the effect of volume growth on transport energy consumption. Public transportation has been marginalized for two reasons. First, the demand for speed, service quality, convenience and flexibility favour personal transport as the main mode of transport (Bandyopadhyay, 2010). Second, government control has adversely affected the operational and financial performance of public transport services in the country (Bandyopadhyay, 2010), severely affecting the quality of service provided by this mode and increasing reliance on private modes of passenger transport. Market distortions by way of pricing of transportation fuels also introduce a bias towards increased usage of private modes of passenger transport as against public transport.