LED · UJALA

Inefficient incandescent bulbs were a big, invisible drain on India's power. The UJALA scheme (Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All), launched in 2015, used the government's bulk-buying power to crash the price of an LED bulb from around ₹300 to under ₹70, then sold them to households on demand. Around 37 crore LED bulbs and over a crore LED streetlights have been distributed.

The scheme is a rare win-win: cheaper bulbs cut household electricity bills, while lower peak demand saved the country from building costly new power plants. UJALA is estimated to save tens of thousands of crores in electricity costs and avoid crores of tonnes of CO2 each year — one of the world's largest and most cost-effective energy-efficiency programmes.

UJALA works through bulk buying and scale. By aggregating demand for tens of crores of LED bulbs, a government agency drove the price down dramatically, then sold them to households at a fraction of market cost — sometimes on instalments through the electricity bill. Because an LED uses a fraction of the power of an old bulb, the saving shows up immediately on both the family's bill and the nation's peak power demand.

The scheme distributed around 37 crore LED bulbs and modernised over a crore streetlights, crashing LED prices for everyone and saving tens of billions of units of electricity a year. The easy gains are largely done — the next step is the next tier of efficiency: efficient fans, air-conditioners and appliances (star labelling), and smart street lighting — squeezing more demand out of the system as India's power use keeps rising.

The easy gains are largely done — the next step is carrying the efficiency push into fans, air-conditioners and appliances (where demand is now growing fastest) and managing lighting e-waste.

0 → ~37 crore LED bulbs (2015→2024). LED price ~₹300 → under ₹70. 1 crore+ LED streetlights. Among the world's largest efficiency schemes. Sources: EESL, Ministry of Power.