Thursday, July 18, 2013: The ‘solar city’ project is Chandigarh has been said to be a model project but there is still doubt if India’s futuristic plan to come up with 60 solar cities will ever succeed. The Delhi government had been forced to resort to radical measures following the rising population and the chronic lack of its access to electricity.
The first solar city program was launched in the month of May, 2011 by the MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy), which aimed to cut back the use of conventional energy at least by 10 per cent. It is obvious that the cities that have already started implementing the solar development procedure will stay ahead as state by Jasmeet Khurana, the market research analyst at Bridge to India.
Thirty per cent of the Indian population is confined to the urban area and this is expected to rise to 36 per cent by 2025. By then the vulnerability to the environment will be of increased proportions. Currently, the urban areas are largely dependent on fossil fuel for their power needs and it is getting harder for the government to cope up with the rising demands. As a result blackout and electricity shortages are becoming more regular.
Farooq Abdullah, the MNRE minister had recently inaugurated a 50 KWh interactive solar PV installation in Chandigarh, the first among the solar cities. The project required an investment of $1.5 million. According to the MNRE, solar rooftop installations could reach to 20 GW by 2015. However, projects also come with the challenges of effective allocation of subsidies. The JNNSM scheme has been doing quite well so far.
