India’s 4.5 million small or medium businesses produce 70 percent of the country’s industrial pollution, according to a World Bank study. But most of those small-scale entrepreneurs can’t afford the upfront cost of energy-efficient equipment — or aren’t persuaded of its usefulness — creating a barrier to India’s attempts to curb emissions from its fast-growing economy. Many areas of the country also experience frequent and severe power shortages, leading to more electricity use as machines reboot after an outage. Officials are urging factory owners to go in together to hire energy auditors, buy new machines, and apply for collective loans, but many businessfolk shy away from colluding with the competition. “We tell them: ‘Your real competition is global. It is China,'” says Harinder Singh of the Confederation of Indian Industry. “We sell it as a money-saving drive. We would lose them if we start telling them about global warming.”
