Indian renewables minister unveils 20GW solar plan details

26 November 2009

India’s minister for new and renewable energy, Dr Farooq Abdullah, has confirmed the details of the country’s mission to 20GW of solar energy capacity by 2022.

Abdullah unveiled plans for the Solar India initiative, one of eight national missions the Indian government plans to deploy as part of its National Action Plan on Climate Change.

‘We are living in a world of rapidly depleting fossil fuel resources and access to conventional energy resources such as oil, gas and coal is becoming increasingly constrained. The rapid development and deployment of renewable energy is imperative in this context and in view of high solar radiation over the country solar energy provides a long term sustainable solution,’ said Abdullah.

The solar mission is to be developed in three phases. The first phase, running up to 2013, will focus on capturing low-hanging options in solar thermal, promoting off-grid systems to serve communities without access to grid infrastructure, and a small level of grid-based capacity expansion. The second phase, running until 2017, will involve the creation of a competitive environment for solar energy development, leading to the planned 20GW of power by the end of the third phase in 2022.

Solar capacity is expected to be increased to 1,000MW by 2013 and an additional 3,000MW by 2017, driven by mandatory use of the renewable purchase obligation by utilities backed with a preferential tariff.

‘Mission will establish a single window investor-friendly mechanism, which reduces risk and at the same time, provides an attractive, predictable and sufficiently extended tariff for the purchase of solar power for the grid,’ said Abdullah.

According to Abdullah, the mission will also prioritise research and development and human resources development to grow the domestic solar industry.

Copyright © 2009 NewNet

Tags: solar

This story was published on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Asia, policy, solar. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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