Go green: new energy mantra

India has embarked on an ambitious mission of harnessing sunlight and wind to contribute at least five per cent power to the country’s energy basket, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 16, 2009, 14:06:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India has embarked on an ambitious mission of harnessing sunlight and wind to contribute at least five per cent power to the country’s energy basket. The credit for this goes to awareness campaigns pitched by environmentalists and it’s also driven by the idea of making money through carbon credits.

Several states have taken steps in this direction. Last month, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi signed an agreement with several companies to provide solar lanterns. The companies will also register with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to earn credits.

In Asansol, West Bengal, the country’s biggest solar energy power plant of 100 MW is coming up. “Till now solar captive power plants have been of one or two megawatts,” said an environment ministry official, who did not want to be named.

Such a big plant is a consequence of a recent notification by the Centre, where in for each unit of solar power, the government will pay Rs 15. Generation of a unit costs between Rs 15-20, says National Action Plan on Climate Change. And the West Bengal government was the first to use the barren mine land in Asansol to install a solar photovoltaic at an approximate cost of Rs 35 crore per megawatt, meaning a unit will cost Rs 15-20.

The change is also taking place at the community level. Last week, an NGO, Development Alternatives, handed over a solar power plant to villagers in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi district. “This village didn’t have power supply since Independence. Now, the villagers own a plant,” said Soma Biswas, in-charge of communication with the NGO.

The Centre wants renewable energy from sunlight and wind to constitute five per cent of the nation’s energy basket. But the stumbling block is over regulation at UNFCCC, said Amit Mitra, secretary FICCI. India has the largest number of projects registered but China has earned maximum carbon credits as its projects have a bigger scope of reducing green house gases.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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