Nov. 20 – India is taking a more aggressive stance in developing its solar-power industry by offering more subsidies for the production of renewable energy.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is scheduled to release a solar-power policy soon with details that will allow more solar projects to receive government funding.
Ministry director, B. Bhargava, told The Wallstreet Journal that the new policy will hopefully spur solar panel manufacturers to increase production to help reduce cost.
Traditional power generation methods are as much as five times cheaper than more environmentally friendly solar power. “If the costs aren’t reduced, this \[subsidy\] policy can’t be sustained on a long-term basis,” Mr. Bhargava added.
India and China are the two top emerging nations considered critical when the global climate-change conference takes place in Copenhagen next month. Their commitment to decreasing greenhouse-gas emissions has been long a subject of debate with China and India unwilling to lower emissions and risk slowing their economy.
Currently, India gets most of its power from coal and wind among renewable. Its present policy only counts for a solar-power capacity of 50 megawatts with subsidies of up to 25 cents per kilowatt hour. According to Bhargava the current program is fully subscribed and will be deveoped further through the new policy.
