‘India Considering Renewable Energy Applications Beyond Electricity'
India’s leadership in creation of International Solar Alliance (ISA) is commendable, and now the country is considering renewable energy applications beyond electricity, said Jamshyd Godrej, Chairperson, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation.
ISA aims to work for efficient exploitation of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Godrej was speaking at the CEEW Shakti Renewable Energy Dialogue, held on Wednesday (21 June) in New Delhi to discuss about the growing role of India in advancing renewable energy deployment.
At the event, talking about India’s leadership and the role of international platforms in scaling up the adoption of renewable energy, Christine Lins, Executive Secretary, Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN 21), said, “Renewable energy development has been encouraging but there is still a long way to go to further scale it up.”
Upendra Tripathy, Interim Director General, ISA, added, “What drives renewable energy is institutions at global, national, subnational levels. There is a role for institutions, individuals and ideas. For the first time, a country’s foreign policy is focused on universal energy access. We consider sunlight as oil in the air. To change energy production, consumption and utilization, we need to rope in the corporates.”
Sussane Dorasil, Head of Department Economic Cooperation and Development, Embassy of Germany, continued, “We have a lot of funds, it’s about how they can be deployed and which projects are bankable.”
Lins also mentioned that “the drive to renewable energy is not just for CSR or because countries are becoming more environmentally conscious, it’s because it makes economic sense”.
During the event, the Global Status Report of REN 21 Renewables 2017 was also launched.
Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Principal Adviser to the Minister of Power and New and Renwable Energy (Piyush Goyal), said, "Renewable Energy is even cheaper than coal. The equation changes with the storage cost for Renewable Energy. There are good reasons why the future of transport is electric. Distributed storage driven by electric vehicles and inverters will drive renewable and storage adoption in India.”
A discussion on global transitions to a renewable energy future and the need to integrate the global renewable energy markets was also held at the event.
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