Aug 30 2010
According to a recent report, India, a rapidly growing economy is way behind in tapping its renewable energy sources. The report adds that if the country wants to reach its targeted 20 GW solar power production by the year 2022 every state in India should start utilizing at least 10% of its energy used from renewable clean energy sources.
The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) of India has demanded the state governments to appraise the utilities about the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) regulations to enable them to achieve their Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) targets. On its part CERC has already issued proper guidelines for the states on the issuance of REC’s from September this year to popularize green energy. The notification will allow the energy certificate holders to sell their green energy certificates to trading organizations, individuals and state governments. The report clarifies that only the states such as Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Maharashtra have notified their final rulings, while states such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Orissa and Tamilnadu have already notified their draft regulations and other states such as Karnataka, Delhi, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Bihar are yet to take any initiative. A recent comment from CRISIL infrastructure advisory says that India has tremendous solar potential amounting to 5 trillion kWh per year, and can produce around 85,000 MW from other clean energy sources but has tapped only around 17,220 MW of its renewable energy power so far.
Matthias Fawer, who holds the position of Vice President in Sarasin Sustainable Investment, a branch of Bank Sarasin and CIE AG a Swiss Bank, that focuses on investments on sustainable energy developments all over the world, said that India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is already facing problems with its energy demand and should consider moving towards usage of renewable energy to meet its growing demand, while carbon reduction comes as an extra feature while using clean energy. He adds that while the use of clean energy reduces India’s dependence on coal and fossil fuel energy, it dramatically increases the number of jobs in the country.