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energy consumption in India is fourth highest in the word after China, USA and
Russia. While talking about concerns over increasing gap between energy production
and consumption Dr. Bhalla stated that the serious gap will double during the next
decade. He expressed his concerns over fast depleting natural coal and oil resource
which are not expected to last long for 70 to 75 years respectively. On sharing the
EXIM policy, he said presently oil dependency of India is around 70% even though
India’s per capita energy consumption is still the lowest in the world i.e. around 455
kg oil equivalent (about 28% of the world’s average). He remarked that India is the
least explored region so far as the oil exploration is concerned because only 15% of
the hydropower potential is being tapped so far.

Expert Dr Bhalla also opined that even though India has vast substantial nuclear fuels
in the form of uranium and thorium, these are not tapped substantially. He further
stated that to meet the growing energy requirements particularly in the field of
industry, transport, agriculture, services and domestic sectors, the need of the hour
is to make use of solar, wind and nuclear energy on commercial basis. Besides,
alternative fuels such as gasoline, CNG, bio fuels, hydrogen, bio diesel from vegetable
oils, ethanol from sugarcane should be produced on large scale.
To curtail pressure on fuel consumption on transport sector, he suggested that we
urgently need to switch over to battery operated as well as other fuel efficient
vehicle technologies like co generation which are also eco-friendly. Also domestic
gas pipeline network should be laid down. He further said that electricity
transmission and distribution losses need to be curtailed because these are as high as
around 26% (highest in the world). At the end, students actively interacted by raising
intelligent questions.