PM sees $20 billion annual investment in green energy sector

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced that there are huge renewable energy deployment plans for India for the next decade that are likely to generate business prospects of around $20 billion per year.

In his address after inaugurating the 3rd Global Renewable Energy Investment Meeting and Expo (RE-Invest 2020), through video conferencing, PM Modi invited investors, developers and businesses to join India’s renewable energy journey.

“Demand for energy in India will keep growing. There are huge renewable energy deployment plans for the next decade,” PM Modi said, reminding how India’s green energy capacity, which encompasses solar, wind, bio-power, and small and large hydropower, is expected to increase from 136 GW to 220 GW by 2022.

“These are likely to generate business prospects of the order of $20 billion a year,” he said, adding that the country’s green energy sector has attracted investments of $64 billion over the last six years.

PM Modi also emphasised that India was among the few countries on track to meet a goal of the 2015 Paris agreement of capping the rise in average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius before the end of the century.

The virtual conference was also attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and senior government officials from Britain and Denmark.

Stressing that ensuring “ease of doing business” is their utmost priority and dedicated Project Development Cells have been established to facilitate investors, he said that in the last 6 years, India has travelled on an “unparalleled journey”.

The PM noted that India’s renewable power capacity is the fourth largest in the world and is growing at the fastest speed among all major countries. The renewable energy capacity in India is currently 136 Giga Watts, which is about 36 per cent of its total capacity.

The PM said that India’s annual renewable energy capacity addition has been exceeding that of coal based thermal power since 2017, and that in the last six years, India has increased installed renewable energy capacity by two and half times.

PM Modi also said India was set to launch a ‘National Hydrogen Energy Mission’. “We want to make India a global manufacturing hub in the renewable energy sector.