Goyal on electricity demand in India
Future of electricity in India rest on the pillars of affordability, sustainability and country’s energy security, said Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy.
Speaking a conference on ‘The Future of Electricity’ on May 10, 2016, Goyal invited international companies “to participate in this great growth story that India has to offer”.
India’s electricity consumption is going to quadruple from about 1.1 trillion units as of now to about 4 trillion units by 2030, he told investors, pointing out that electricity demand elsewhere in the world was stagnant due to economic slowdown and use energy efficiency.
“Despite the massive roll out of energy efficient schemes, we still see a possible 10% jump in the electricity growth annually for the next 15 or 16 years,” he said.
“Indian Electricity sector, to my mind, is possibly the biggest business opportunity the world has to offer today. So India is a bright spot offering a huge trajectory of growth in the electricity consumption going forward”, he added.
Goyal pointed out that fresh demand for power will come from the 230 million people who will get electricity for the first time, the elimination of diesel generation sets because of access to power and from increased economic activity coming from the ‘Make in India’ campaign.
The Minister said that power consumption is expected to grow at 10% annually over the next 10-15 years and added that higher personal incomes and the emphasis given to domestic manufacturing activities will significantly increase power consumption despite the improvements in energy efficiency.
India has set a target of setting up 175 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy generation capacity by 2022, out of which 100 GW is to come from solar.
Goyal said that solar power capacity, presently at 6.7 GW, will touch 20 GW by next year. Since the solar power sector is on track, the government will now focus on encouraging new hydropower and wind power capacity.
The Minister said that the government launched Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana, “UDAY’ which is expected to improve health of state-run power utilities, enable them to buy more power from producers and invest more in efficiency improvement.
The government is also ready to contract at least 70 to 80 million metric standard cubic metres (mmscmd) of natural gas from global suppliers if they are ready to supply long-term at affordable rates, which will enable India to operate its idle gas-based power capacity, he disclosed.
The Government will adopt new technologies to make coal-based power generation cleaner and also set up a pool of capital to fund research on green energy technologies with contribution from public sector companies, in which private enterprises could also take part, he said.
Touching on environmental concerns, Goyal said that the challenge before the nation is to balance development imperative with sustainability and concerns towards environment.
Smart Cities
Speaking at the Second Smart Cities India Expo in New Delhi, he pointed out that technology must also be scalable to ensure it has the required impact.
Technologies for Smart Cities must be customised for Indian needs, he stressed in a speech at the expo on May 11, 2016.
Technology must also be scalable to ensure it has the required impact, he stressed.
“Pilot projects are not the right way to go about implementation as it is time consuming and has a high chance of failure. We need to look at economies of scale and faster implementation.”
He cited the example of LED lighting and the government’s aggressive approach in its distribution, which helped the consumer save around US$6.5 billion in power bills. fii-news.com
