At the third global RE-Invest conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said told the august gathering that India’s renewable sector would need an annual investment of $20 billion a year.
India’s green energy capacity, which encompasses solar, wind, bio-power, and small and large hydropower, is currently at 136 GW. That is expected to increase to 220 GW by 2022, Modi said.
“These are likely to generate business prospects of the order of $20 billion a year,” he said, adding that the country’s green energy sector has attracted investments of $64 billion over the last six years.
Modi said the South Asian nation was among the few countries on track to meet a goal of the 2015 Paris agreement of capping the rise in average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius before the end of the century.
Modi also said at the RE-invest he expects demand for domestically made solar cells and modules to increase to 36 GW in three years.
India currently imports over 85% of its solar cell and module requirements from China, and its local manufacturing potential is negligible compared to its requirements.
The prime minister also said India was set to launch a “National Hydrogen Energy Mission.”
The virtual RE-invest conference was also attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and senior government officials from Britain and Denmark.
This is a Press Information Bureau Feed; edited by Clean-Future Team