India won’t stop at 100 GW for Solar

FICCI organized a session on ‘India’s Solar Story: Opportunities and Perspectives’ at the World Future Energy Summit on the outlines of the visit of Minister of Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy & Mines Mr. Piyush Goyal and the accompanying high level Business Delegation to the summit, Abu Dhabi during 15-18 January 2017. This panel discussion highlighted the current solar energy landscape in India and the opportunities it presents for manufacturing, project development, grid integration, financing and investment, given that India is all set to become the third largest solar market globally. Minister Piyush Goyal while addressing the first India-specific session-India’s solar story organized by FICCI at the summit said “the 100 gigawatt target for solar should not be a constraint. India won’t stop at 100 GW. With the advent of new technology in storage, we are poised for huge growth. Solar growth will support landowners to derive income and solar industry to build their business.” India should manufacture in India for India. We should assess what it would take for us to be an end to end solution provider for solar. We can manufacture at scale. A subsidy regime is not the best way to move forward. We need to draw up a regime where government can be an enabler for manufacturing to compete at good quality and prices. We need to foster partnerships with high quality technology suppliers.

We will provide large tracts of land to manufacture at scale. Indian developers should also promote indian manufacturing. The discussion was chaired by Mr. Ardeshir Contractor, Co-Chair, FICCI Solar Energy Task Force and Managing Director and CEO, Kiran Energy and the distinguished panelists included Mr. H R Gupta, Managing Director, Indosolar India Mr. Hitesh Doshi, Chairman and Managing Director, Waaree Energies Limited , Mr. Nimish Jain, Director– Global Sales, Vikram Solar Pvt. Ltd. Project Development and Grid Integration, Mr. I S Jha, Chairman and Managing Director, Power Grid Corporation of India, Mr. Khurshed Daruvala, Managing Director, Sterling & Wilson, Mr. Sanjeev Aggarwal, Managing Director, Amplus Infrastructure Developers Private Limited, Mr. Kishor Nair, COO, Welspun Energy Limited Solar Financing and Investment Opportunities in India, Mr. K S Popli, Chairman & Managing Director, IREDA. Dr. A Didar Singh, Secretary general delivered the welcome remarks at the session.