The economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development rely on the complex optimization of many factors, including resource conservation, waste minimization, energy efficiency, climate change mitigation, longer product life cycles, and effective recycling. Copper, the “green” material, plays an important role in all of these solutions. Energy efficiency is of dominant importance nowadays due to increasing electrical energy demand, increasing awareness of Global warming & increase in prices of fossil fuels. Bridging this gap from the supply side is a very difficult and expensive proposition. The only viable way to handle this crisis, apart from capacity addition, is the efficient use of available energy, which is possible by using energy efficient devices. Electric motors are a basic need of industry. Motors and motor driven systems are huge consumers of electricity, they are estimated to account for 43%-46% of all global electricity consumption & Moreover electrical motor driven systems consume approximately 70% of energy consumed by the industry. If the entire world were to adopt a least life cycle approach to motor systems, the energy efficiency savings potential is 3,890 billion kWh p.a. by 2030, nearly 30 percent of the total. However, the penetration of energy efficient motors remains low in India and at the same time, below IE1 motors have a substantial market share. Harmonization of the current Indian Standards with IEC 600034-30 shall enable the promulgation of labelling up to IE3 / IE4 and the phase-out of below IE2 motors. Electrical energy consumption can be greatly reduced by replacing older, worn out motors with energy-efficient equivalents and specifying energy efficient motors in new equipment. Such practices not only lower energy costs but also improve equipment reliability.

Energy efficiency improvements are usually technically simple, relatively low cost and quick and easy to implement. Often, it is simply a matter of sensible purchasing decisions, buying the unit with the lowest lifetime cost rather than the one with the lowest purchase price.

The electrical efficiency of motors can be improved by replacing the standard aluminium electrical conductor in the motor rotor with copper, which has a much higher electrical conductivity. Until recently, die-cast motor rotors were produced only from aluminium while researchers worked on solving technological issues with copper pressure die-casting. Today, copper pressure die-casting is a proven technology and thousands of die-cast copper motor rotors are produced annually for motor applications where energy savings are prime design objectives. The use of copper in place of aluminum for conductor bars and end rings of induction motor rotors results in improvements in motor energy efficiency due to a significant reduction in IR losses. Motor modelling by a number of manufacturers has demonstrated that motors with copper rotors yield overall rotor loss reductions from 15 to 20% compared to aluminum. The advantages of motors with copper motor rotors on an equivalent basis with aluminium include the following;