Ginsberg earlier served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs, where he oversaw a comprehensive set of programmes to make buildings, equipment and appliances more energy efficient; support state, community and low income energy programmes; and pave the way for a healthy and prosperous future through high efficiency research and development, building codes and appliance standards.

In India late last month on a lecture tour, Ginsberg spoke to Deputy Managing Editor Ramananda Sengupta on why the United States wanted to help India conserve energy, and how.

Is this your first visit to India? What brings you here?

This is my very first visit. I want to have a chance to learn everything I can about energy in India and talk about some of the things we are doing in the US on energy efficiency and particularly renewable energy. I was invited here by the State Department, on a visiting lecture series.

I will be meeting with universities, business groups, with a variety of non-governmental organisations, and will have a chance to describe what we are doing as well as learn.

One big topic is the emphasis on an Asia-Pacific partnership which was formed a couple of years ago among six countries: India, China, Australia, South Korea, Japan and the US. The emphasis of this partnership is to bring technologies to bear, to help reduce climate change and to reduce energy waste, to increase the use of renewable energy.

If these six countries, which represent an enormous gross domestic product and have a huge energy consumption, can reduce waste and increase energy efficiency, then it will cascade to the rest of the world.

India, China and the US are power hungry nations, perpetually needing huge quantities of oil. Do you see any conflict between these nations as they try to source their energy needs?

There's a limited amount of oil. Scientists still don't agree on how much oil there is and how much there will continue to be, but we know that at some point it will be increasingly difficult and expensive to get to. So I think all three nations need to be looking at the alternatives.

The alternatives that we see for transportation fuels include biomass. I would love to see a quantum leap in India and China particularly specially as you have started producing your own vehicles. Make them flexible fuel from the start, so that can use ethanol, or E85  , not just hybrid electric or gasoline, but hybrid E85 flexible fuel, so that they can use ethanol in 85 per cent concentration.

What are the other options?

The other is the promise of the hydrogen economy. It's a very interesting technology. The idea that you can crack water, pull hydrogen atoms out, to be able to use those as a storage medium for electricity that either power your home through a fuel cell, and your car, also probably through a fuel cell.

We are right on the starting edge of that kind of effort. The US created an international partnership for hydrogen economy. Sixteen countries are participating in that, doing the research that's needed. So that when a person born today (a few years ago) wants to drive his first car, that person, in the year 2020 or so, that person will have a choice of a hydrogen vehicle.

Those are the longer term solutions for transportation fuels that the whole world needs to deal with. There may be a little jockeying in the meantime for the limited resources of oil, but I think we all have realize that we have a greater challenge, and that is to wean ourselves, literally, from the addiction of oil.

In the State of the Union Address that the US President gives every year, last January he said we are addicted to oil in the US. The whole world is addicted to oil. We have to break that addiction. It's as dangerous as any other addiction. So we know we have got to work on it.

The two likeliest candidates that I see, and I think hybrid vehicles, gas electric hybrids will be a good transition. Natural gas was thought to be some of that transition, but even that is finite, and of course the cost of natural gas continues to up as oil has gone up.

I am much more optimistic about bio-fuels and hydrogen. But hydrogen has more technological research needed in order for the promise to be fulfilled.

In India, a big an issue is energy loss during transmission. . .

I saw this issue when I was doing some research before I came here. The electricity utilities here have had a big problem with electricity theft.

No, theft is a factor, but I meant transmission losses due to outdated wires and things like that. . .

There is transmission loss in the US, and I don't know how much more or less that is versus India. It takes modern equipment and upkeep in order to keep it the most efficient. I think our numbers are something like five to eight per cent line loss, we have long transmission lines.

Power theft is a factor too in India.

Yes, that is one we have haven't faced as much in the US and I don't know what the issues and solutions are, but I do understand that electricity has become so important in everyone's lives, and it is no longer a luxury.

So there has to be a way to get the benefits of electricity to the entire population. Just the idea that you can have a light bulb to read by. . . for kids to be able to do that, to be able to cook some hot food, heat your home and do other things that electricity can do, is in important part of what I want to see for the US future, for India and throughout the world.

I think in some way you can do this through reduced electricity consumption, through energy efficiency, as well as through advanced technologies of renewable energy, to bring more reliable supplies into the mix.

What you are saying that it has be a combination of increasing efficiency as well as increasing the supply of power?

It really is as simple as that. It's not rocket science. You want to produce more electricity from renewable resources, and reduce your waste in what you do use, so that it goes further.

For example, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California did some research on India's energy situation, and they found that four energy consuming products alone use about 22 per cent of the electricity produced in India: refrigerators, motors, window A/Cs, distribution transformers.

We know that there are high efficiency motors, we know that there are better efficiencies in the other products as well. The analysis that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory did said that nationwide, you can save 2.5 per cent of all the electricity with just those four products.

If you save 2.5 per cent, it would save a huge sum of money for consumers. We estimate that at $5.5 billion, which could go to better purposes. But also think about 2.5 per cent less electricity used.

Your outages will be less, your productivity would go up, businesses would not be as interrupted, and because electricity is fairly heavily subsidized in India, you'd be able to put that 2.5 per cent into more productive economic development issues.

So, with just four products, you get 2.5 per cent, imagine if your energy efficiency in lighting and buildings and appliances, all the things that use energy, so that we can really reduce consumption.

How expensive would this be, given that India is looking for cheaper, low-cost housing?

I am not an expert on India housing, and I hope to be able to learn something during my visit. In the US, in a typical housing subdivision, we estimate that the cost can be 10 to 20 per cent more to make the house highly energy efficient and moving towards zero energy.

In America, the houses are about $100,000 to $200,000. So 20 per cent is not that big an issue. And when you think about the reduced electricity utility costs, within the life cycle of that home, it may be net savings. Plus you get the benefits to the environment, the economy will be growing because you will have a new generation of new efficient products, and you've got better health in the houses.

It turns out that buildings that are more energy efficient aren't as drafty, so kids don't get respiratory diseases as much. And businesses that are in energy efficient buildings are more productive. It's common sense. If an office space is too hot or too cold, badly lit, people aren't as productive.

In schools, we've done some research and found that scores go up in better quality schools where the temperature is right and the air turnover is correct and lighting is good. So in addition to just the economics, it has wonderful side benefits. To me, it makes obvious good sense.

How much power comes to the American electricity grid comes from nuclear energy?

I think as much as 20 per cent of the power is generated from nuclear energy in the US now. You have to keep in mind that the US was blessed with enormous amounts of coal. So coal is our principal electricity source.

Hydel power, from dams, is about eight or 10 per cent. So we have a diverse fuel source. Natural gas is providing some of the electricity now, and then there's some of the renewable sources that are beginning to come in. Wind particularly, has started growing very successfully. Solar energy isn't contributing as much as I think it can and will, and bio-mass is coming into the picture as well.

Some of our utilities also still burn oil. And in the US, we are importing well over 50 per cent of our oil. So when we can cut our oil consumption, we reduce our energy vulnerabilities as well.

If you were to suddenly switch from petrol or diesel to ethanol, or hydrogen cells, or whatever, you would need to make certain modifications to the vehicles, and certain other modifications at the trickle down level. . . so there could be opposition from that level. . . .

We have systems in place that are very expensive. Gasoline transportation, retail, repair, all that is geared to gasoline. It turns out incidentally, that Henry Ford, who started the Ford Motor Company over a 110 years ago, thought the fuel source was going to be ethanol.

In fact, I have a slide that shows him wearing a soy suit, made out of soya beans. So some of these things aren't so new. It's a matter of rediscovering our past. There was a great American called George Washington Carver, who is not as well known as he should be, again over a 100 years ago, he experimented with peanuts, and found enormous benefits from using peanuts very much like the bio-industries that I talked about.

All the chemicals and pharmaceuticals that oil can do, over a 100 years ago, he found that peanuts could do. So we are going back to that. And the simplicity of going back to nature is going to be very attractive to the whole world. I am also confident, that as we start thinking about this concept, that nothing is waste, everything is a resource.

What does that mean?

The idea that we shouldn't waste anything, whether it is transmission losses, energy efficiency in lights, or throwing out products: we want to reduce, reuse, recycle, and you want to be able to take as much of your harvest and put it into ethanol, for instance.

There's a very dramatic story, when I was London, the British foreign office invited 24 countries, and Nigeria was represented in those discussions. The fellow mentioned that there are cities in Nigeria that are oil cities, that haven't seen nighttime in 20 years because they are flaring the gas all night.

Instead of harnessing natural gas and using it creating liquid natural gas or compressed natural gas, or using it outside for industrial purposes, they were burning it. So there was never any night time in those villages. And I'm thinking, what an incredible waste! So we haven't been smart.

Particularly in the US, we've been very wasteful. We have such abundant resources, that you grow complacent after a while, which makes you wasteful. So we've all got to learn that nothing is wasted, everything is a resource. Re-use, recycle, I am seeing more and more of that kind of thinking. The best example was aluminum cans. Years ago, we realized that the cost of producing new aluminum was 10 times the cost of using recycled aluminum to make new cans.

Now that seems pretty obvious. I've got to believe that there are those kinds of re-engineering techniques in every industry and in every thing that we do. Instead of taking municipal waste out to a garbage dump, and adding the transportation costs for sending it, why not find a way to segregate your garbage, put it in a chute, from where it goes down to place from where the local bio-refinery picks it up, and you make it into a useful product?

The US is one of the biggest consumers of energy. Yet they are urging the developing world to conserve and save, to go green. Is there an element of hypocrisy there?

That's a reasonable argument. We risk saying 'do what we say and not what we do.' I am seeing more and more consciousness in the US for being a better consumer and a better citizen of this good planet. I think our wasteful ways were a product of having so much natural resources.

There's enormous sunshine, biomass, wind and geothermal potential in the US which we haven't used. Enormous coal, and before that wood, we tore forests down to heat our homes and make our industry work. So now we've reached a point in the US where we've learnt a lesson. What I would say that argument is, we've learnt a lesson, we don't want you to repeat that mistake.

So what is the message that you bring to India?

In some ways I am here to say we have been addicted to oil, we don't want to be addicted to it anymore, and we are doing our best to change the addiction, and if we can help other countries avoid that step, I think we are all to the good.

And when I look at India, and see the enormous growth, it's so much better to build a new energy efficient building from the start than to try and make it energy efficient later. You are going to be building more and more.

We want to be there to help share the lessons we have, on high performance buildings, on zero buildings, on using other resources in ways that can help you avoid some of the mistakes we have made.