Master plan for solar city ready

Mysuru and Hubbali-Dharwad have been selected for project

Moving forward with Narendra Modi government's mission to push solar power initiatives, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is taking forward a long-pending proposal to develop 60 solar cities.

The Ministry is ready with the master plan for 48 cities projects after assessing available solar power in those places.

In Karnataka, Mysuru and Hubballi-Dharwad have been selected for the project.
Though the previous United Progressive Alliance government launched the project in 2012,  it was progressing at a snail’s pace due to poor response from the states.
With the prime minister giving decisive push to green energy projects, the scheme has got a fresh momentum, an official from the ministry said.

The ministry will finalise master plan for the rest of the cities in association with the state government and would provide funds to implement it at the earliest, he said.

Installing renewable energy equipments, coupled with efficient practices, the ministry is hoping to reduce at least 10 per cent of the projected demand on the city’s conventional energy needs through the solar city project.

The Centre would provide Rs 50 lakh for each solar city project in a state for preparing the master plan, setting up institutions to implement it, awareness creation and capacity building.

The master plan will also include the baseline for energy consumption during the current year, demand forecasting for the year 2018, and sector-wise strategies and action plan for implementation of renewable energy projects to gradually reduce fossil fuel consumption in the city, a ministry official said.

The National Democratic Allaince government is pushing to increase solar power generation from the existing 2,900 MW to 1,00,000 MW by 2022. 

This would require an investment of around Rs 6.5 trillion over five years. To achieve the stated goal, the government is planning to train around 50,000 people in fields associated to solar power through industrial training institutes under national skill development mission, said an official.

Of India’s total installed power generation capacity of 254,649.49MW, renewable power has a share of only 12.45 per cent, or 31,692.14 MW.

The country’s National Action Plan on Climate Change forecasts that it would generate 10 per cent of its power from solar, wind, hydropower and other renewable sources by 2015, and 15 per cent by 2020.