The Bhumi Project’s latest report, authored in partnership with GreenFaith, the Shine Campaign and EPG Economic and Strategy Consulting, is a first-of-its-kind look at how Indian religious and spiritual institutions are implementing renewable energy solutions.
More than 200 million people in India still lack access to electricity. This energy poverty has devastating impacts on community health, education, and economic growth. Cooking without clean energy inflicts severe respiratory illnesses on countless women and children, causing over 100,000 premature child deaths in India on an annual basis. Without reliable electricity, children cannot study after dark, vaccines cannot be stored, and jobs are not created. In India, the issues of energy access and climate change are inextricably linked.
Our report, Rise to Shine, explores how the country’s large and diverse religious sector can play an important role in addressing these two interconnected challenges. Indian religious and spiritual institutions command significant moral authority and have a large civil society presence. If engaged and equipped properly, they could play a transformative role in ending energy poverty in India. Their potential impact, however, has received very little sustained attention from regional and national governments, the renewable energy, energy access and social entrepreneur sectors, and funders.
Authored in partnership with GreenFaith, the Shine Campaign and EPG Economic and Strategy Consulting, our report explores how the country’s large and diverse religious sector can play an important role in addressing these two interconnected challenges. Indian religious and spiritual institutions command significant moral authority and have a large civil society presence. If engaged and equipped properly, they could play a transformative role in ending energy poverty in India. Their potential impact, however, has received very little sustained attention from regional and national governments, the renewable energy, energy access and social entrepreneur sectors, and funders.
Over a six month period we researched 30 Indian religious and spiritual institutions, distributed across the country, which had initiated some form of renewable energy and/or sustainability initiative. These institutions were from the Hindu, Islamic, Jain, Sikh and Christian communities, along with a number of non-denominational spiritual organisations. The stories we gathered offer insights on how one of Indian society’s most culturally influential sectors can make a far greater contribution to closing India’s energy access gap.
Key findings include:
- Renewable energy systems can generate significant savings and displace the majority of religious institutions’ fossil fuel use. The organisations we studied regularly serve more than one million people combined, saving approximately 332,000 kW of energy annually through their use of renewable energy, reducing their fossil fuel usage by more than 70% and reducing costs by approximately £1m annually.
- Cost savings and reliability are prime motivators. Most institutions decided to install renewable energy systems to save money and to ensure a reliable, uninterrupted supply of energy. Environmental or spiritual/moral factors were not cited as a significant motivation.
- Most Indian religious institutions have not yet considered how they might address energy access issues. Very few institutions had considered expanding the scope or ambition of their renewable energy efforts to include a focus on energy access for rural communities, and very few had established any relationship with social entrepreneurs or commercial enterprises in the renewable energy or energy access fields.
For more information, can read the report summary, key findings and recommendations or download the full report.
About The Bhumi Project
The Bhumi Project is a leading international Hindu voice addressing issues related to climate change and sustainable development. It is a joint initiative of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and GreenFaith. Since launching in 2009 Bhumi has developed environmental plans for temples across India, trained young Hindu climate leaders, issued the 2015 Hindu Declaration on Climate Change and organised interfaith events in India in partnership with GreenFaith.