Govt plans water audit for industry

NEW DELHI: The government plans to set up an agency on the lines of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency to encourage conservation of the increasingly scarce resource, official sources said.

The water resources ministry has also roped in industrial bodies such as Ficci, Assocham and CII to conduct an audit of water consumption by industries.

The government plans to do similar audit for consumption in the domestic and irrigation fronts as well. The ministry, however, ruled out any possibility of rationing the use of water.

“For now we will only issue guidelines. We want to set some benchmarks on how to use less water for the same production process by the industries,” said a senior government official.

A study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water estimates that India’s usable water supply by 2030 could fall short of projected demand by 50%. Industrial demand for water is projected to rise from current 42-billion cubic metre (bcm) to 92 bcm in 2025 and 161 bcm in 2050.

“There are energy usage regulations, pollution standards, environment protection laws but no regulation for water usage which leads to huge wastage,” said an official. Working on the lines of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which rates companies and products on their energy savings, the water efficiency agency will rate industries on the basis of water conservation during production phase.

“There is a great scope of water conservation —up to 25-30%— in Indian industries. Some industries have tried water conservation measures, but there’s still a long way to go. This initiative will surely make a difference,” said S Raghupathy, executive director, CII-Godrej Green Business Centre.

He said the government intends to first generate water usage data, and based on national and international benchmarks, it plans to develop guidelines and a framework to standardise water audits in industry.

The focus initially would be on water intensive sectors such as thermal power plants, textiles, pulp, chemicals etc. Of the total water use by the industry, thermal power plants are the biggest users of water and account for 88% of the total industrial water use. They are followed by engineering (5.05%) pulp & paper (2.26%) and textiles (2.07%) industries.

“The plan is to benchmark water use across different industrial sectors. It is also envisaged that through measures on awareness creation; knowledge sharing and incentives we will be able to build up best practices and encourage a large section of Indian industries to go in for measures like water audits followed by undertaking conservation measures. This needs to be followed by means for reporting and verification as well,” said Romit Sen, senior assistant director, water division, at Ficci.