Defying the logic that a growing economy consumes more energy, India has emerged as the most energy efficient country among leading emerging nations including China, Brazil and South Africa.

Latest findings from the Emerging Economy Report by research and consulting firm, Center for Knowledge Societies, show emerging economies could play pivotal roles in reducing the growing environmental anxieties worldwide.

The findings are based on the fact that these economies have opportunity to voluntarily moderate their carbon emissions for global environmental benefit and market advantage.

The developed world has looked at growth in India and China with increasing alarm as the prior experience of industrially-developing countries worldwide had suggested that as an economy grows, it consumes more and more energy.

And given currently available energy and technology options, this leads to increased carbon emissions.

In contrast, the report mapped energy consumption patterns across different industrialised and emerging economies and observed that growing nations were already highly efficient.

"This means that they (emerging economies) create more economic value per unit of energy consumed. On the other hand, as their GDP per capita grows, their carbon footprint balloons... energy innovation is the only way out of this logic," CKS founder and CEO Aditya Dev Sood said.

The report shows that most emerging economies remain far below the energy consumption as well as carbon emission levels of industrialised economies.

India's per capita energy consumption of 12.6 million Btu and Indonesia's (21.5) are almost negligible when compared to more economically developed nations like South Korea (170.2 mBtu per capita) and Taiwan (181.5).

China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emission of 2.6 thousand metric tonnes per 1,000 people is far below the 10.16 thousand metric tonnes per 1,000 people in Germany.

The report has also identified several new energy paradigms that can fundamentally alter the ways in which end consumers access and use energy.

Therefore, the new paradigm can dramatically change the adverse environmental effects of increased energy demand in emerging economies. The report highlighted that energy scarcity can lead to energy efficiency.

To some extent the outstanding and latent demand for energy of most emerging economies, which is never met, can contribute to energy efficiency, at least in economic terms.

Interestingly, emerging economies employ a number of innovative just-in-time and very local techniques for energy creation, redistribution and management.

Emerging economies could become energy innovators in future as they are confronted with the high costs of energy as well as the prospect of climate change, it said.

The report has focused on seven countries -- India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Brazil.

These regions were included in the study because they are experiencing 'informationalisation' under conditions of limited or partial industrialisation.

Sood explained that this report was dedicated to understanding the new directions in which these economies and societies are headed.