Nagaland ranks low in Niti Aayog’s State Energy and Climate Index Round 1 report

Our Reporter
Dimapur, April 11 (EMN): Nagaland ranks low in Niti Aayog’s State Energy and Climate Index (SECI) Round 1 report, which was released on Monday, scoring 27.9 points against the national average of 40.6.

The ranking of states and union territories (UTs) by the central government’s policy think tank ranks was based on 2019-20 data on six parameters namely DISCOM’s (distribution company) performance; access, affordability and reliability of energy; clean energy initiatives; energy efficiency; environmental sustainability; and new initiatives.

As per the report, Nagaland scored below the national average in all the parameters except environmental sustainability with 40 points against the national average of 37.7.

The state is ranked at 33 out of 35 states and UTs in the country and seventh position out of eight states in smaller states category with Goa, Tripura, and Manipur topping the table while Arunachal Pradesh is ranked lowest and Meghalaya in the sixth position.

Goa tops the table in SECI score with 51.4, followed by Tripura (45), Manipur (36), Mizoram (35.9), Sikkim (33.3), Meghalaya (29.4), Nagaland (27.9) and Arunachal Pradesh (27). All the small states performed well in environmental sustainability, and access, affordability and reliability of energy categories, scoring in the range of 55-40 and 60-30 respectively.

Meanwhile, Tripura is the best performing state in the country in terms of the new initiative parameter with a score of 58.7. The report mentioned that all the small states are performing average in the category of environmental sustainability and access, affordability and reliability with scores in range of 55-40 (national average: 37.7) and 60-30 (national average: 46.4) respectively.

Among the larger states, Gujarat, Kerala and Punjab are the top three performers, while Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are in the bottom three.

In the UTs category, Chandigarh, Delhi and Daman & Diu/Dadra & Nagar Haveli (D&D and D&N) are the top three performers, while Andaman and Nicobar, Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep are in the bottom three.

It may be mentioned that the SECI score is the summation of the weighted values of all the parameters, and categorisation has been made on the basis of the overall score range (26.9-55.7) for the reference period 2019-20. The top one-third is considered as front-runners followed by the middle one-third as achievers, and the last one-third as aspirants, the report stated.

The report stated that more than half of the states scored higher than the average value (40.6) overall.

Comparing results of SECI to the SEEI-2020, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Haryana are the top-performing states. However, as per the SECI-Round I scorecard, among these three states, Haryana is the only front-runner state (category rank- 4th), while Karnataka is in the group of achievers (category rank- 8th) and Rajasthan is an Aspirant state with a score of 35.7 points (category rank- 17th).