Tuesday, June 10, 2014: Soon after taking over as Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal has made his intentions clear. Under the esteemed leadership of newly elected prime minister Narendra Modi who is an advocate of solar power and envisions a future where every household in the country will have at least one light bulb, with solar energy being at the periphery of it all, Goyal has taken another step forward towards its ambitious goal of every home in the country having solar panels by 2019.
Very recently, the Minister reiterated his stand to “expand scope and usage of clean and green energy and to ensure synergy in the power, coal and renewable energy sectors”. And looks like the Minister is clearly a man of his words. The Government is now planning to set up four solar power plants of 1,000 MW each. The government plans on setting up these plants tentatively in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, in order to accelerate India’s solar energy programme substantially.
Established in 2010, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) set the target of installing 10,000MW of solar power by 2017 and 20,000MW by 2022. The government now plans to revamp the structure of the JNNSM and also hinted towards a possible expansion of the Electricity Act 2003 to encourage greater utilisation of renewable energy. Basically, the government wants to club solar and conventional power so as to make renewable energy more affordable to its people. In his endeavour to bring about a revolution of sorts with respect to solar energy, Goyal is also looking to learn from the Gujarat model as well as from any other place in the world to make full utilisation of the 300 sunny days that India enjoys each year.
