India reiterates Renewable energy and Energy efficiency as its key pillars Climate Change strategies

India’s Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Bhupender Yadav held a meeting with H.E. Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Climate Envoy and Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology virtually today and discussed issues relating to COP 26, renewable energy and other related matters.

Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Climate Envoy and Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology sought support of India for the UAE Initiative on Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM-C) along with US and UK to be launched at COP26 to be held in Glasgow later this year.

India’s environment minister Shri Bhupender Yadav stated that renewable energy and energy efficiency are among the key pillars of Indian climate change strategies. India has worked to make sure that renewable energy, particularly solar energy, becomes cheaper than energy from fossil fuels.

The Minister further mentioned that India has already installed about 151GW of non-fossil fuel installed capacity with 39 percent of the total capacity installed and going ahead, India has declared an aspirational target of installing 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030.

The Environment Minister also mentioned about India’s Hydrogen Energy Mission, global initiatives such as International Solar Alliance (ISA), Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) and leadership group for Industry Transition (LeadIT) and underlined the need for prioritizing the concerns of developing countries, particularly in areas of implementation support including finance and technology.

The world over, countries have started shifting away from polluting fossil fuel to solar energy. Unfortunately, in some states in India, there is an effort to still set up coal-fired thermal power plants. Due to political pressure certain state governments are allowing setting up of these coal-fired thermal power plants and state electricity boards forced to get into costly power purchase agreements. This will burden the state electricity boards and consumers with costly power for a long time along with the pollution that comes with these coal-fired thermal power plants. Hope the Union Government seriously bans setting up of any new coal-fired thermal power plants in India.