Union Power Minister R K Singh said future bids for renewable projects would have at least 50 per cent manufacturing component for developers.
Addressing a business session with President of Seychelles Danny Faure, the new and renewable energy minister said the Centre would also make it obligatory for project developers to manufacture storage system.
“We are going to come out with bigger bids but our future bids will be tagged along with manufacturing. We will bid out capacity plus the commitment to manufacture up to 50 per cent of the capacity. That is manufacturing of solar cells,” Singh said.
The minister further said, “We are also bringing storage. We are going to be one of the biggest markets of storage in the world. We will add storage to the bid gradually. There will also be an obligation to manufacture storage (system) up to a certain percentage. That is the growth trajectory we are targeting.”
On clean energy in India, he said, “We will add 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022. We have already added around 70 GW of renewable energy that is solar and wind and around 40 GW is under implementation.”
On lowering emission goals, he said, “We have pledged in 2015 that by 2030, 40 per cent of our installed capacity will come from renewables.”
The minister said that with the addition of large hydro power of 45 GW to 70 GW of renewables, it has already crossed 30 per cent, and by 2030, about 53 or 55 per cent of installed power generation capacity will be renewables.
Talking about investment in clean energy in India, he said about USD 42 billion investment has come in renewables in the last four years which was done by facilitating the market and India did not invest except in the transmission.
On India’s household electrification programme, he said, “In the sphere of power and renewables, we are engaged in massive expansion programme. We are adding about 40 million electricity consumers. We have already added about 7.5 million consumers till date. We have added 100,000 km lines to transmission country.”
On ties with Seychelles, Singh said the policy of the government has always been to stand with the east African island nation and help it.
He, however, said that the trade with Seychelles has not developed the way it should have been. “Our trade figures do not reflect the close relations what we have between the two countries.”
Elaborating further, he said Seychelles exports to India account for only 0.42 per cent of its total exports and India’s exports to that country are only 2.94 per cent of the east African nation’s total imports.
“So trade relations have not really taken off. Now we have to examine what were the reasons for that. We are a huge market. There is no reason why any business and industry from Seychelles will not come here. We are sure that (Seychelles) will do whatever it can.”
Source: PTI