The Indian government is gearing up to attract international investors to pump in billions of dollars into its renewable energy sector. The ministry of new and renewable energy will organise the country’s first global investors summit exclusively for the renewable energy sector early next year.
The concept of such a renewable energy investors summit is new to the Indian clean energy sector, even though general investor summits organized by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat attracted significant investment in the solar energy sector.
It was through these investor summits that Gujarat sealed agreements to set up more than 900 MW in solar power capacity. Today, the state boasts Asia’s largest solar park, with over 200 MW capacity, and accounts for about a third of India’s installed solar power capacity.
The summit would be in line with Mr Modi’s target to push the cumulative installed renewable energy capacity to 100 GW over the next five years. India’s current installed power generation capacity is about 250 GW, of which about 13% (32.4 GW) is based on renewable energy sources. This renewable energy capacity, however, contributes only 6-7% to the electricity generated in the country; the government intends to increase the share of the renewable energy in the electricity generation to 12% by 2020.
The government is pushing renewable energy as a real alternate to the traditional coal and gas-based power plants, which are currently struggling to procure adequate fuel, and facing seemingly lengthy legal obstacles.
Regular and consistent power supply to all was an important election promise that helped the Narendra Modi government earn a landslide victory in this year’s elections. The government is pushing to expand the National Solar Mission to significantly enhance the capacity addition target of 22 GW by 2022. The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy recently signed an agreement to develop the country’s first offshore wind energy project.
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