80th Annual General Meeting
February 15-16, 2008

Address by Mr. V Subramanian, Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy

Dr. Mitra,
friends.

We are in competition with any sector, be petroleum, gas, power or atomic energy. We are here to supplement and complement their efforts. I thought to take this opportunity to just send a few messages across. Since I feel there are plenty of people who are uninformed ill-informed or mis-informed on renewable energy.

One of the most important things we have is our name as Ministry of Non Conventional Energy Resource, one and half years ago changed to Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. People have not got reconciled to it. They keep getting confused about the names and ultimately they keep calling me Ministry of Non Renewable Energy and this is the amount of awareness.

You talk about capacity. Ours is energy not electricity alone. When we talk about electricity, when I left for this seminar from my office, I was given a figure of 11,600 MW that is under implement, and that to be, around 12,000 MW by end of March. Of this, 6725 MW were added during the last 5 years of 10th plan. That accounts for 25% of the total power generation capacity that was added during the 10th Plan. Let's get facts right. We want to add 15,000 MW in the 11th next Year Plan. And out of 15,000, 14,000 will be grid connected and 1000 will be off grid distribute the generation system. One of the criticisms is how do this system helps because renewable energy systems are seasonable, we cannot rely on it. If that be so, let's someone take stock of the numbers of unit that were supplied to the grid. In 2005-06, 2006-07 and now we have completed 2007-08. Is it more than certain other forms of power that have been pushed into the grid. Today we are talking about without being there scoring points, I just say when it comes to future projections we will talk about in terms of GW and we still talk in terms of MW. We have 12000 MW of capacity, this is three times of nuclear capacity we have in the country. They are talking about adding another 5000-10000 MW, it would be around 25000 MW in the next 5 years. One of the things we have done is wind alone accounts for 8000, then we have cogeneration. If we go into the international for a, what is renewable, everybody talks about such and such country has 70% valuable. He is correct. They include their entire hydel capacity in this. Taking my colleague in the power ministry as part of my team, if I talk about renewable capacity of the country it is 33%, not 7% which I count only for renewable system, which include only hydel capacity. This is one message and I am finding it extremely difficult to put across because we all work together here, it is not a question of scoring points. One of the most important things I want to say most of the investment - 97% of the investment that has come into the sector is from private sector. I do not have a large public sector company to fund all these projects. If 90% of the investment can be done by the private sector, we are confident rest of it would also be done by public sector with appropriate policy support from the government, what is the kind of policy support that one is expecting. But unfortunately, sad to see various memoranda that is being presented to the Finance Minister on Budget. There is no specific recommendation on policy for increasing the share of renewable energy. There are no paragraphs on strategy except on odd recommendations for customs duty exemptions and excise duty reduction.

As an eminent trade body, I would also expect people to look at these strategies. Capacity has to grow. W are going to supplement the efforts of that, we have 2 million sq mtrs of area under solar thermal water heating system. Go to Bangalore, go to Pune and look at roof tops. They all have water heating systems made of them. We have another 500,000 sq mtr of industrial heating applications with them, we have 4 million bio gas plant in rural areas which are household. We have commission at least about 25 MW of biogas and power plants. One of the recent research projects that have commissioned these, let us purify the bio gas to remove carbon dioxide, sulfur and make it as good as natural gas so that I can supplement my friend's effort here and pipe natural gas into town supply gas pipelines. This is one of the ambitions we have. Instead of power supply agreements, we will have gas supply agreements to come and it is only recently out of our ministry's initiative, we announce the policy for solar grid connector power. This is something which is very very different from what has been done so far. This will be energy purely generation based, you generate power, get incentive and we are going to change it for biomass, for hydel and for cogeneration, everything we are going to change the entire pattern so that emphasis is not on creation of capacities. My successor 5 years down the road will not be able to talk about capacities, he will come an talk about the number of units supplied to grid. That is how we want to change the situation and there are plenty of people who are here. Some people have worked out, I thought they should also listen to me, have been keenly observing who are the people working probably there. Some of the media people, they are not looking at renewable energy sector. It is not as glamorous as power and as sexy as petroleum and natural gas but it is something that you have to reckon with. We are here to stay and if we are doing it, it is not because of climate change concerns. The point made by My friend Mr Srinivasan that we can afford these imports and the point made by Mr Butola how we will find it difficult to get more and more of resources? If we are concentrating in renewable energy, it is not fashion statement, it is not luxury for us for very very western countries talk. For us it is a necessity. If it is a necessity, you need government policy, the private sector response to make its substitute.

Thank you.