Context

The NITI Aayog released India’ first State Energy and Climate Index (SECI, Round 1) for performance in various dimensions of energy-efficiency and climate-resilience.

About

Key Finding:

• The overall national score is 40.6, which the central government think tank didn’t find encouraging.
• More than half the states scored higher than the average, according to the index. This implies that the remaining couldn’t even manage that.
• Three UTs (Union territories) and two states have scored above 50.
  • They are Chandigarh, Delhi, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli).
  • Gujarat and Goa are the best-performing state.
• Chandigarh topped the index with a score of 55.7.
  • Lakshadweep had the lowest score at 26.9.
• The Index categorised the states and UTs into three segments:
  • the top one-third are considered as front-runners
  • the middle one-third as achievers and
  • the last one-third as aspirants
• Among the larger states, Gujarat, Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra were categorised as front-runners.
• States like Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar were “achievers”. The Rest were “aspirant”.
• Among the larger states, Gujarat has scored the highest of 1, followed by Kerala and Punjab with a score of 49.1 and 48.6 respectively.
• The lowest score of 7 was achieved by Chhattisgarh and it can be observed from the parameters score that the state has not performed well in terms of clean energy initiatives, energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, and new initiatives.

The Index has based the overall performance on six parameters:

• Performance of DISCOMs (power distribution companies)
• Access, affordability and reliability of energy
• Clean energy initiatives
• Energy efficiency
• Environmental sustainability
• New Initiatives