India to double clean energy capacity in four years: PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said India plans to double its renewable energy capacity to 55,000 MW by 2017 as part of efforts to increase efficiency in energy use.

"It is proposed to double the renewable energy capacity in our country from 25,000 MW in 2012 to 55000 MW by the year 2017," he said while inaugurating the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial conference in New Delhi.

Addressing the energy ministers of the world's 20 leading economies, he said this would include exploiting non-conventional energy sources such as solar power, wind power and biomass energy.

Singh said India's 12th Five Year Plan, which has just got under way, recognises the importance of evolving a low carbon strategy for inclusive and sustainable growth.

"We have set ourselves a national target of increasing the efficiency of energy use to bring about a 20 to 25 per cent reduction in the energy intensity of our GDP by 2020," he said, adding that the Plan envisages an expanded role for the private sector.

However, he said the pace of expansion of new energy sources was constrained by the fact that these were more expensive than conventional energy.

"The cost of solar energy for example has nearly halved over the last two years, but still remains higher than the cost of fossil fuel based electricity. If the cost imposed by carbon emissions is taken into account, then solar energy is more cost effective, but it is still more expensive," he said.

Counting on the probability of costs falling in this area, Singh said India has launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission to develop 22,000 mw of solar capacity by the 2022 covering both solar photovoltaic and solar thermal. "The cost differential is being covered by different forms of subsidy and cross-subsidy," he said.