India to have 6,000 MW solar power by 2017: Ramesh

Promising action that will help curb India's dependence on coal, Environment and Forests Minister, Jairam Ramesh, said India will have at least 6,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2017, bulk of which will be put up by the private sector.

Promising action that will help curb India's dependence on coal, Environment and Forests Minister, Jairam Ramesh, said India will have at least 6,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2017, bulk of which will be put up by the private sector.

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Ramesh said the Jawarharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, launched in the national capital last week, has planned 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022 and intends to drive down costs through a rapid scale-up of capacity.

"In the next two-years, we are not going to be seeing huge amounts of capacity but by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2017), I expect to see at least 5,000-6,000 MW of capacity," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here yesterday.

This is higher than the target of 4,000 MW of solar power by 2017 envisaged in the solar mission document.

"We want to replicate the mobile telephony revolution in solar energy till the cost of solar energy continues to fall very drastically," Ramesh said.

The Government will create necessary environment to attract project developers to invest in research and domestic manufacturing of solar power equipment.

"It's a country-wide mission including the private and public sector. In fact, the bulk of the 20,000 MW will come from private industry, not from the Government," he said.