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India to spend $2.3 trillion to go green
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 14 October 2010, 17:31 IST
Bangalore: India to spend $2.3 trillion to boost its energy sector by 2030, which includes a substantial burden for expanding the country's energy basket to include green sources such as solar, wind and nuclear power.
It indents to improve energy efficiency and using clean technology to help Asia's third largest economy balance growth and environmental aims. B.K. Chaturvedi, a member of Planning Commission that charts India's growth path, recently said that being the world's third-worst carbon emitter it is essential for the country to shift to a greener economy.
Last year the country set a goal for slowing the growth of its emissions, saying it will try to rein in its 'carbon intensity' the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP by between 20 and 25 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.
Power remains a top priority in terms of increasing energy efficiency and use of renewables as well. India aims to add about 100 gigawatts (Gw) of power generation capacity by early 2017, much of it from coal, despite conceding it would miss by 79 percent an earlier five-year target of adding 78.7 Gw by March 2012. But India will need to keep burning cheaper fossil fuel to expand the reach of electricity to half of its one-billion-plus population without power.
"We should develop this in the context of a two-pronged strategy: The first is improving energy efficiency, and the second is changing the mix of the energy which we consume. Some of it will be towards energy consumption, but a lot of it will go towards improving energy efficiency and improving the composition of energy," he added. The portion of the amount would be spent on making the shift to a green economy in the next two decades is so far not mentioned.