Barriers and opportunities to implement energy efficiency in urban water systems through CDM. Case of State of Karnataka, India

In this report, an urban water sector CDM project in Karnataka, India, is profiled as a case-study to analyse causes, effects and impacts of various barriers and to identify opportunities to overcome these barriers. The study attempts to identify key elements of a strategy for application to municipal sector CDM/EE projects both in Karnataka and in other parts of India. Like their counterparts in the rest of the world, Indian municipalities face similar organisational and financial barriers to implementing energy efficiency (EE). While energy efficiency has its own barriers to market penetration, sector specific barriers such as the diffuse nature of these organisations (large number of municipalities) and diffuse EE projects (many smaller projects) pose additional difficulties for EE implementation. For municipal water supply this not only results in wasteful use of resources like water, energy and chemicals, but also contributes to local and global sustainability problems. Municipal managers? lack of awareness about EE in urban water systems and incapacity to exploit EE opportunities results in large scale technical and commercial losses and broader sustainability concerns linked to urban water supply. As a platform to address these concerns at a higher level, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is anticipated to bring new sustainability thinking to bear, engage new actors & channels of EE investment and increase accountability and credibility of municipal bodies through collaboration with multilateral agencies. However, municipal bodies must strengthen EE at both the municipal and sector level through enabling actions including improving capacity of municipal personnel, institutionalising energ