Tuesday, July 08, 2014: The Indian government has opened a new front in its high-profile Solar Mission strategy, braced with a fresh initiative to be able to explore possibilities of whether the country’s deserts can make available as the ideal location for a new wave of wind and solar energy projects.
As per a Business Standard report, the government has started working on the lines of assessing the feasibility of four ‘mega-scale’ renewable projects in places as the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir.
The tabled “desert mission” is at an early stage, but it represents the latest boost to India’s Solar Mission, which aims to bring 20GW of solar capacity online by 2022. It will also offer further reassurance that the newly elected government under the aegis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains committed to mobilising clean energy investment.
The news arrives at a time when Modi had agreed to work with the French government to deliver further progress on climate change, ahead of next year’s UN Summit in Paris.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, following one of the first meetings between Modi and a European power since his election victory, “We discussed climate change and have been positively impressed by the approach of Prime Minister Modi and his ministers,”. Fabius further supplemented that the two governments have “decided to prepare for the Paris conference together and it is important because India is a major player in that conference.”
