New Delhi: Prime minister Narendra Modi Monday delivered the inaugural address at 4th India Energy Forum CERAWeek through video conference. The theme of this edition was “India’s Energy Future in a world of Change”.
Speaking on the occasion, the prime minister said India is full of energy and its energy future is bright and secure. He elaborated that in spite of various challenges like fall in energy demand by almost one third, prevailing price instability, impacted investment decisions, projected contraction in global energy demand over the next few years, India was projected to emerge as a leading energy consumer and is projected to nearly double its energy consumption over the long term.
The prime minister said India’s Energy Plan aims to ensure energy justice while fully following India’s global commitments for sustainable growth. This means more energy is needed to improve the lives of Indians with a smaller carbon foot-print. He envisioned India’s energy sector to be growth centric, industry friendly and environment conscious. He said that is why India is among the most active nations in furthering renewable sources of energy.
The prime minister listed the interventions which made India the most attractive emerging market for clean energy investment viz, distributing more than 36 crore LED bulbs, reducing the cost of LED bulbs by 10 fold, installing over 1.1 crore smart LED street-lights in the last 6 years. He said these interventions have enabled an estimated energy savings of 60 billion units per year, estimated green-house gas emission reduction of over 4.5 crore tonnes of Carbon dioxide annually and monetary savings of around Rs. 24,000 crore annually.
The prime minister remarked that India is well on track to meet the global commitment. He said the target to increase the installed renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022 has been further extended to 450 GW by 2030. He said in spite of India having one of the lowest carbon emissions than the rest of the industrialized world, India would continue its efforts to fight climate change.
The prime minister said the reform in the energy sector has been fast paced in the last six years. He listed many path-breaking reforms brought out recently like the reforms in Exploration and Licensing Policy, shifting the focus from ‘revenue’ to ‘production’ maximisation, focus on greater transparency and stream-lined procedures and plan to grow refining capacities from about 250 to 400 Million Metric tonnes per annum by 2025. He said increasing domestic gas production has been a key government priority and would be achieved through ‘One Nation One Gas Grid’ to shift the nation towards a gas-based economy.
The prime minister said like the seven horses driving the chariot of Sun god, India’s energy map will have seven key drivers.
1. Accelerating our efforts to move towards a gas-based economy.
2. Cleaner use of fossil fuels particularly petroleum and coal
3. Greater reliance on domestic sources to drive bio-fuels.
4. Achieving the renewables target of 450 GW by 2030.
5. Increasing the contribution of electricity to de-carbonize mobility.
6. Moving into the emerging fuels including hydrogen
7. Digital innovation across all the energy systems.
He said there will be continuity of these robust energy policies that have been in place over the last six years.
The prime minister said India Energy Forum – CERAWeek is serving as an important platform between industry, government and society and wished this conference to have fruitful deliberations for a better energy future.
