By Business India Editorial

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has said that India has the potential to grow into a global supplier of renewable energy equipment. 

He was addressing the session themed ‘making India a global manufacturing hub in renewable energy manufacturing’ at the 3rd edition of Confederation of Indian Industry’s renewable energy conference.

Goyal said that atmanirbharta in renewable energy is integral to the country’s economic security and national security. He added that having achieved power for all, India must now aspire to achieve the goal of sustainable power for all. 

He stressed that there is a need to maintain the entire renewable energy supply chain in India to the best of our ability, right from the equipment stage up to innovation and new technology, so that the country can be a global leader. “This is a great time to protect and nurture this industry and so that India may also grow into the world supplier in the renewable energy sector, he added.” 

Goyal expressed confidence that India had the potential to become a good source of supply of renewable energy equipment. He underlined India’s commitment to achieve 500 GW renewable energy generation by 2030 and said that the target gave us sufficient market size to encourage our investors and manufacturers to set up more and more manufacturing facilities in India.  

He said India was leading the way in wind energy and that in solar energy the efforts that MNRE has made such as the PLI scheme will incentivise domestic manufacturing and will help us be self-sufficient and become suppliers to the world in renewable energy equipment. 

Goyal highlighted several initiatives such as the Modhera model of solar powered villages, Asia’s largest bio-CNG plant in Indore, and said that all of these were good signs for local manufacturing in the renewable energy sector.

In the meantime, Union Minister for Power & New and Renewable Energy RK Singh has reiterated that having achieved the target of deriving 40 per cent of its electricity from non-fossil fuels in 2021, the country was now all set to breach the current projection of 65 per cent for 2030.

“I will tell you right now that 65 per cent is an understatement as. Our established capacity today is 170-odd GW of non-fossil. We have about another 80 GW under construction. That makes it 250 GW,” he said.

The minister added that upcoming green hydrogen projects will also play a major role in helping the country far exceed its renewable energy goals.

“We had asked the industry how much green hydrogen capacity they would be setting up and got a figure of 25 million tonnes (MT). But we had not included a few industries at that time. So, it’s not going to be 25 MT but anywhere between 30-35 MT. Every 1 MT of green hydrogen requires 20 GW of renewable energy,” he informed.