India Launches Massive Shove for Clean Power, Lighting, and Cars
Solar-powered LED lights illuminate an entrance to TERI University in Fresh Delhi, India. The country plans to switch totally to the technology over the next few years.
Photograph by Udit Kulshrestha, Bloomberg/Getty
India is in the midst of the “largest energy transformation project in the world" organizers of the Vienna Energy Forum proclaimed, while introducing the keynote speaker, India’s Energy Minister Piyush Goyal on May 11.
“Everything switched in two thousand fifteen with the Paris climate agreement. We must decouple economic growth from environmental impacts and leave a better world,” said Goyal, to noisy applause from the one thousand six hundred fifty energy experts and government officials in Vienna. “Every moment counts.”
“I’ve never heard such visionary and progressive remarks from a world-leading country,” the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, told me afterwards. The puny Pacific island country is hardly ten feet above sea level and rising water levels resulting from climate switch have coerced thousands to leave the country already.
“India sees the urgency of climate act,” said Sopoaga.
India is in a big hurry to green its energy system to create jobs, improve the quality of life for its citizens, clean the air and water and, yes, tackle climate switch, its leaders say. Keep in mind this is a country with 1.Three billion people, almost three hundred million of whom do not have access to electric current and where the average income is $1,600 a year.
Now mainly powered by coal, India is adding fifty percent more solar and wind than the U.S. presently has installed. It is substituting seven hundred seventy million street and household lights with energy-saving and long-lasting LEDs and bringing electrified access for the very first time to ems of thousands of poor rural villages. And India is already doing all of this quicker than anyone believed possible.
You Might Also Like
“India is the poster boy for clean energy… displaying this is not a cargo, just the opposite,” said Vivien Foster, an energy economist at the World Bank. “It’s a superb chance.”
A Lighting Revolution
The LED lighting replacement for the entire country is hoped to be finished by 2019—just four years after the program was announced in 2015, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected. Prior to that India was committed to using coal to develop its economy, just as China had done twenty five years ago. But now Modi is attempting to hitch India’s future to twenty one st century technologies.
The energy savings from substituting seven hundred seventy million household and street lights will cut India’s peak electro-therapy request by 20,000 megawatts (MW) and slash emissions of climate-heating CO2 by almost eighty million tonnes annually. That’s almost as much as Chile’s CO2 emissions in 2015. This drastically reduces the need to build more energy plants and will save $7 billion a year.
And all of this has been accomplished without government funding.
India is a leader in a type of business called an Energy Service Company (ESCO), which makes money only on energy costs they manage to save their customers. Government power utilities set up an ESCO company called Energy Efficiency Services Limited, which has made nothing but profits since its inception. This company has worked with LED manufacturers to drive the costs of these lights down eighty five percent in less than three years. Now India gets the world’s lowest price, Goyal said in an interview.
Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has been so successful it just announced a three-year, $130 million investment in the United Kingdom, to tap into the estimated $8 to ten billion energy efficiency market there. EESL aims to capture much of this by promoting and implementing low-carbon, energy efficiency, and renewable energy solutions along with LEDs.
There is nothing like a national LED conversion program in the U.S. However, many U.S. cities are converting streetlights to LEDs to save millions in energy costs—but it has been slow going. Chicago’s Brainy Lighting Project to substitute 270,000 light fixtures just launched in April and won’t be ended until 2021. In Washington, D.C., 71,000 streetlights may be substituted under the “Streetlight Modernization Project,” but it will only embark in 2018.
A $482 solar panel is installed on a puny, rural grocery store in Sullya Taluk village, India. The proprietor hopes to recoop the costs by saving on kerosene.
Photograph by Scott Eells, Redux
Surging Solar
India’s renewable energy sector is also growing at lightning speed. At the December two thousand fifteen Paris climate conference, Modi astonished many by announcing India would add one hundred sixty gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar by two thousand twenty two to the existing twenty six GW. The U.S. presently has just over one hundred GW in total. One GW can power one hundred million LED lightbulbs used in homes.
“This is an ambitious aim,” says energy experienced Niklas Höhne, a founder of NewClimate Institute, a European research center. “There is significant momentum and now two Indian states are considering one hundred percent renewable energy, which is remarkable.”
“Green energy is no longer expensive or difficult to build and it is well-suited to our needs,” said Goyal. Given all the benefits, every country should be taking the same path, he said.
India’s solar and wind boom has shoved costs off a cliff, falling from twelve cents a kW/hr to just four cents a kW/hr for solar. This is cheaper than coal. As a result, Goyal hope that no fresh coal power will be needed after 2022. One analysis suggests some of India’s existing coal energy is more expensive to generate than building fresh solar. India may soon end all imports of thermal coal, Goyal believes.
This gains are especially epic given India’s substantial economic and social challenges, says Höhne.
As for those three hundred million with no access to violet wand, that too is switching. The last household will be connected by 2019, Goyal believes, three years before India’s two thousand twenty two target.
“Prime Minister Modi grew up poor. He knows what it is like to not have electrical power. He is downright committed to making this happen,” Goyal said.
India’s energy revolution may soon convert the country but it is also creating “solutions that other countries across the world can replicate and use to support their own sustainable energy transition,” said Rachel Kyte, CEO for Sustainable Energy for All and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General.
Driving Electrical
Electrical cars are the next big thing India hopes to leap on. It commissioned a investigate on how the country’s entire fleet of vehicles could be one hundred percent electrified powered by 2030. This is not an official government target yet.
But by that date, Goyal believes electrical cars will be the only vehicles sold because of low operating costs, little maintenance or repairs needed, along with a long life. The batteries will also work very well with solar and wind as energy storage devices. No subsidies will be needed, he said, since India already taxes gasoline at about the world average—50 percent higher than the U.S. does.
“We are doing all of this even if no one else is. We have a big role to play in the fight against climate switch,” Goyal said.
India Launches Massive Thrust for Clean Power, Lighting, and Cars
India Launches Massive Thrust for Clean Power, Lighting, and Cars
Solar-powered LED lights illuminate an entrance to TERI University in Fresh Delhi, India. The country plans to switch fully to the technology over the next few years.
Photograph by Udit Kulshrestha, Bloomberg/Getty
India is in the midst of the “largest energy transformation project in the world" organizers of the Vienna Energy Forum announced, while introducing the keynote speaker, India’s Energy Minister Piyush Goyal on May 11.
“Everything switched in two thousand fifteen with the Paris climate agreement. We must decouple economic growth from environmental impacts and leave a better world,” said Goyal, to noisy applause from the one thousand six hundred fifty energy experts and government officials in Vienna. “Every moment counts.”
“I’ve never heard such visionary and progressive remarks from a world-leading country,” the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, told me afterwards. The puny Pacific island country is scarcely ten feet above sea level and rising water levels resulting from climate switch have compelled thousands to leave the country already.
“India sees the urgency of climate activity,” said Sopoaga.
India is in a big hurry to green its energy system to create jobs, improve the quality of life for its citizens, clean the air and water and, yes, tackle climate switch, its leaders say. Keep in mind this is a country with 1.Three billion people, almost three hundred million of whom do not have access to electro-stimulation and where the average income is $1,600 a year.
Now mainly powered by coal, India is adding fifty percent more solar and wind than the U.S. presently has installed. It is substituting seven hundred seventy million street and household lights with energy-saving and long-lasting LEDs and bringing electrified access for the very first time to ems of thousands of poor rural villages. And India is already doing all of this swifter than anyone believed possible.
You Might Also Like
“India is the poster boy for clean energy… showcasing this is not a cargo, just the opposite,” said Vivien Foster, an energy economist at the World Bank. “It’s a superb chance.”
A Lighting Revolution
The LED lighting replacement for the entire country is hoped to be finished by 2019—just four years after the program was announced in 2015, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected. Prior to that India was committed to using coal to develop its economy, just as China had done twenty five years ago. But now Modi is attempting to hitch India’s future to twenty one st century technologies.
The energy savings from substituting seven hundred seventy million household and street lights will cut India’s peak electro-therapy request by 20,000 megawatts (MW) and slash emissions of climate-heating CO2 by almost eighty million tonnes annually. That’s almost as much as Chile’s CO2 emissions in 2015. This drastically reduces the need to build more energy plants and will save $7 billion a year.
And all of this has been accomplished without government funding.
India is a leader in a type of business called an Energy Service Company (ESCO), which makes money only on energy costs they manage to save their customers. Government power utilities set up an ESCO company called Energy Efficiency Services Limited, which has made nothing but profits since its inception. This company has worked with LED manufacturers to drive the costs of these lights down eighty five percent in less than three years. Now India gets the world’s lowest price, Goyal said in an interview.
Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) has been so successful it just announced a three-year, $130 million investment in the United Kingdom, to tap into the estimated $8 to ten billion energy efficiency market there. EESL aims to capture much of this by promoting and implementing low-carbon, energy efficiency, and renewable energy solutions along with LEDs.
There is nothing like a national LED conversion program in the U.S. However, many U.S. cities are converting streetlights to LEDs to save millions in energy costs—but it has been slow going. Chicago’s Brainy Lighting Project to substitute 270,000 light fixtures just launched in April and won’t be ended until 2021. In Washington, D.C., 71,000 streetlights may be substituted under the “Streetlight Modernization Project,” but it will only embark in 2018.
A $482 solar panel is installed on a puny, rural grocery store in Sullya Taluk village, India. The proprietor hopes to recoop the costs by saving on kerosene.
Photograph by Scott Eells, Redux
Surging Solar
India’s renewable energy sector is also growing at lightning speed. At the December two thousand fifteen Paris climate conference, Modi astonished many by announcing India would add one hundred sixty gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar by two thousand twenty two to the existing twenty six GW. The U.S. presently has just over one hundred GW in total. One GW can power one hundred million LED lightbulbs used in homes.
“This is an ambitious purpose,” says energy experienced Niklas Höhne, a founder of NewClimate Institute, a European research center. “There is significant momentum and now two Indian states are considering one hundred percent renewable energy, which is remarkable.”
“Green energy is no longer expensive or difficult to build and it is well-suited to our needs,” said Goyal. Given all the benefits, every country should be taking the same path, he said.
India’s solar and wind boom has shoved costs off a cliff, falling from twelve cents a kW/hr to just four cents a kW/hr for solar. This is cheaper than coal. As a result, Goyal hope that no fresh coal power will be needed after 2022. One analysis suggests some of India’s existing coal energy is more expensive to generate than building fresh solar. India may soon end all imports of thermal coal, Goyal believes.
This gains are especially extraordinaire given India’s substantial economic and social challenges, says Höhne.
As for those three hundred million with no access to violet wand, that too is switching. The last household will be connected by 2019, Goyal believes, three years before India’s two thousand twenty two target.
“Prime Minister Modi grew up poor. He knows what it is like to not have electrical power. He is fully committed to making this happen,” Goyal said.
India’s energy revolution may soon convert the country but it is also creating “solutions that other countries across the world can replicate and use to support their own sustainable energy transition,” said Rachel Kyte, CEO for Sustainable Energy for All and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General.
Driving Electrified
Electrical cars are the next big thing India hopes to leap on. It commissioned a explore on how the country’s entire fleet of vehicles could be one hundred percent electrified powered by 2030. This is not an official government target yet.
But by that date, Goyal believes electrified cars will be the only vehicles sold because of low operating costs, little maintenance or repairs needed, along with a long life. The batteries will also work very well with solar and wind as energy storage devices. No subsidies will be needed, he said, since India already taxes gasoline at about the world average—50 percent higher than the U.S. does.
“We are doing all of this even if no one else is. We have a big role to play in the fight against climate switch,” Goyal said.
