A Growing India Sets Goal to Harness Renewable Energy

About 56 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people do not have access to electricity. And as coal deposits dip and climate change concerns rise, it is becoming increasingly untenable for India to continue relying on coal-produced power, which accounts for 40 percent of its total greenhouse gas emissions.

“We need to get our act together,” said Gauri Singh, joint secretary in India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, which was set up 26 years ago, “because India is growing faster than anyone can imagine. Renewable energy will have to supplement conventional power supply.
“Our priority is to achieve energy security and self-reliance. Climate change is not the main driver for renewable energy in India, it is a co-benefit,” she added, echoing a debate in the United States, where renewable energy is being sold less as a way to save the planet than as a way to create new “green collar” jobs.

Despite the deepening energy crisis, renewable energy, predominantly wind and biomass, make up 3 percent of India’s total electricity production. Solar energy is not even a fraction of that, though India receives abundant sunshine throughout the year.

But India hopes to move from near-zero to 20,000 megawatts of solar electricity by 2020, as part of the National Action Plan on Climate Change. Announced in June 2008, the plan is a structured response to combat global warming and part of a proposal India intends to pitch at a climate change summit in Copenhagen this December.

The centerpiece of the plan is the National Solar Mission, which is aimed at harnessing India’s neglected energy source. Today, India’s solar companies say they generate so little electricity because of inadequate state support.

Washington Post