"Govt working towards goal of meeting country's energy needs with clean source": Union Minister Piyush Goyal

New Delhi [India], November 2 : Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal at the Observer Research Foundation's (ORF) first edition of the Energy Transition Dialogue in New Delhi on Thursday said, "India's energy transition has a very large end-to-end dimension and the government is working towards the goal of meeting the country's energy needs with a clean source."
According to an official release issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Goyal said that for the next 30 years, India is going to see a huge amount of growth in the economy and that is going to lead to significant demand for energy in all walks of life, so India's energy transition has two dimensions: transit from past consumption levels and what we do to meet the needs of this growth.
"In the circumstances that we are in, India has been upping its targets on almost every aspect of the energy transition story by getting clean energy into the system," he said, adding that India is working on many fronts.
Citing some examples, Goyal said that India is supporting the production of clean energy equipment and opening up the transition to green hydrogen and ammonia.
One of the key initiatives of the government has been the production-linked incentive programme, which has worked very well, he said, adding that it is a well-thought-out, well-crafted government policy to promote manufacturing in India. The PLI scheme is not only for mobile phones; it's across several sectors: auto components, specialty skills, technical textiles and so on. In green energy, India has some investments coming in for solar, highly efficient solar PV manufacturing, and in manufacturing green hydrogen, he said.
Goyal pointed out that an important element in the energy transition is the transition from coal. He said that alternate and green sources like wind or solar are intermittent sources of power that are not available on a steady-state basis throughout the day, particularly in the peak hours.
"India's annual eight percent growth in power also cannot be made by all the nuclear plants that are made all over the world," he said, adding that the world will have to recognise this very serious challenge of an alternate baseload to coal before they preach to India that we have to look at transiting from the old traditional sources. Goyal also pointed out that the vision of Prime Minister Modi for an international power grid is the possible solution that the world is now accepting.