The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is home to more than 5500 students, 500 faculty and 2000 supporting staffs. In the year 2007, the annual electricity bill of this 500 acre campus crossed Rs 10 Cr. or USD 2 million. The per capita energy consumption was estimated to be 1384/KWh/person/annum or Rs 5950 (USD 118)/person/annum. It was at this time when the institute took the energy consumption issue quite seriously and began a detailed research on the energy demanding activities.

For statistics I would like to quote that 40% of the energy was used in air conditioning (to be noted that none of the student residence is air conditioned), 26% in lights and fans of hostel and academic area and 11% in geysers and washrooms of student hostels.

The institute and students got into some innovative energy saving strategy which brought down the energy consumption by as much as 20% by an investment of USD 0.6 million with a payback period of 1.75 years.

The institute took some initiatives at the administrative level by hiring an Energy Manager who will share a certain percentage of energy saved at the end of the year. The electrical maintenance staff are entitled for bonus based on savings achieved. The departments should submit a bi-annual report, failing to achieve savings lead to penalization while suitable saving may be given to performing department.

It also took some re innovatory measures like installing solar water heater, setting up bio gas plants for the organic wastes, installing 200 aircon savers for 1.5 ton ACs, upgrading the FTLs, replacing the motors with less energy consuming ones, changing the water  piping diameter to 250mm etc.

The student community also came up with an innovative initiative to spread awareness among the general students. The 5500 students of the institute are accommodated in fourteen in-campus hostels. These hostels have their own individual student body to look after the cultural, sports, maintenance etc. needs of its students. These hostels often conduct General Championships or GCs where hostels compete with each other in some specific genre. What the council initiated was a new GC called Energy GC, where taking a random month as the base month the hostel saving maximum percentage of energy will be awarded with a part of that saving to be used for its students' activities.

This GC is still in practice and in fact it became so popular that similar initiatives have been adopted by the student council of other Indian Institutes of Technology as well.