By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, OCT 07, 2020: HARBOURING on the perfect timing to bring together various market players and catalyze cutting-edge PV manufacturing in India, NITI Aayog, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE), and Invest India together organized a global symposium 'India PV Edge 2020' on October 6, 2020. It was one of its kind platform for global cutting-edge technology providers, equipment makers, and PV champions to present their technologies to the Indian stakeholders who are drawing up their PV manufacturing plans and collaborate, thus boosting the 'Make in India' campaign. The participating companies also had the opportunity to hear from the Indian policymakers involved in developing manufacturing schemes. Around 60 prominent Indian and global CEOs attended the event.

The symposium consisted of three sessions. The first session was the Plenary Session, in which India's most prominent policy makers highlighted India's strong impetus on renewable energy, the investment climate and the country's ambition and opportunities in solar manufacturing. Mr R.K. Singh, Minister for Power (IC), and Minister for New and Renewable Energy (IC) stated that IndiaIndia has largest RE growing capacity in the world. India had promised on sidelines of COP-21 that by 2030, 40 % of the country's energy capacity will be from Non-Fossil Fuel sources.  We arealready at 38.5 % and by 2030, 60% of our energy capacity is expected to be from Non-Fossil fuel sources. He further said that we are on our way to achieve our targets of 175 GW of RE capacity by 2022 and 450 GW of RE by 2030.

Mr Singh further said that the addition of RE capacity will continue due to two reasons, one because country's power demand is growing and another due to replacement gradually phasing out traditional power generating systems with Renewable Energy systems.

The minister mentionedthat we are committed to fulfil our visions to "electrify our economy" and to "Green our Electricity". He also pointed out the ambition of e-mobility and Clean cooking based on electricity and powered by green energy. He also talked about various interventions of Ministry to realise the Prime Minister's vision of "Aatmanirbhar Bharat". He said that we have taken various steps like safeguard duty, interest subvention and Approved List of Models and Manufacturers etc. He said that future bids will be planned to encourage manufacturing using advanced and latest technology.

While thanking NITI Aayog for organising the global symposium, Mr InduShekharChaturvedi, Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Government of India, said that the ministry is implementing a number of supply side interventions including BCD( Basic Customs Duty), Performance Linked Export Scheme and Interest Subvention Scheme to promote domestic manufacturing in RE sector. He also mentioned about demand side interventions like domestic content requirement under KUSUM and Rooftop Scheme that are being implemented by ministry to supplement the Aatmanirbhar Bharat efforts.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, highlighted that "India has a 31 GW demand from government-sponsored schemes that require locally made solar panels and a large 300 GW target over the next ten years". He urged the PV manufacturing industry to utilize this large demand to invest in state-of-the-art manufacturing lines and collaborate with startups and research institutions to continue to increase the performance of the solar panels and reduce the cost.