Attracted by India’s electric vehicle (EV) mobility play, the BP’s group joint venture (JV) with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) may roll out charging networks across the country in the future.
This comes in the backdrop of RIL and BP JV having announced on 6 August their fuel retailing partnership for India. The joint venture, which is owned 51% by RIL and 49% by BP, plans to set up 5,500 fuel retail outlets across India.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its part plans to install one electric vehicle charging station after every four kilometers in cities and twenty five kilometers on both ways of highways connecting to these cities.
The plan to increase charging infrastructure will go through different phases wherein the mega cities with a population of over 4 million and highways connected to these cities will be considered in the first one- to three-year period.
Subsequently, in the second phase within three to five years period, big cities like state capitals, union territory headquarters may be covered for distributed and demonstrative effect.
India, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China, has also been pushing for a gas-based economy and plans to connect 10 million households to piped natural gas by 2020.
India plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 33-35% from its 2005 levels by 2030, as part of its commitments to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted by 195 countries in Paris in 2015.
BP in partnership with Reliance Industries is investing about $5 billion to bring about 1 billion cubic feet a day of new domestic gas on-stream beginning mid-2020.
Reference- livemint, Economic Times, Financial Express