India to offer incentives for solar modules: PM

PM Modi invited global investors to join India's renewable energy journey offering PLIs for high-efficiency solar modules.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said production-linked incentives similar to those for electronic manufacturing will be offered for high-efficiency solar modules to boost the generation of electricity from renewable sources which has the potential to generate an annual business of USD 20 billion.

Speaking at the RE-Invest 2020 conference, he invited global investors to join India's renewable energy journey.

"There are huge renewable energy deployment plans for the next decade," he said, adding that these are likely to generate business prospects of the order of around USD 20 billion per year.

"Today, India's renewable power capacity is the fourth largest in the world. It is growing at the fastest speed among all major countries," he said.

Renewable energy capacity will rise to 220 GW by 2022 from the current 136 Giga Watts (GW), he added.

Renewable energy capacity at present is about 36 per cent of India's total electricity generating capacity.

Modi said that after the success of Production Linked Incentives (PLI) in electronics manufacturing, "we have decided to give similar incentives to high-efficiency solar modules".

He, however, did not elaborate.

Stating that ensuring 'ease of doing business' was the utmost priority, he said a dedicated project development cell has been established to facilitate investors.

"In the last six years, we increased our installed renewable energy capacity by two and half times," he said. "Our annual renewable energy capacity addition has been exceeding that of coal-based thermal power since 2017."

Even when it was not affordable, investments were made in renewable energy. Now, investments and scale are bringing costs down, he said.

Noting that in the last six years, India has been travelling on an unparalleled journey, Modi said, "we are expanding our generation capacity and network to ensure every citizen of India has access to electricity to unlock his full potential".

(PTI Report)