Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State(IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy said that the government is committed to ensure that the poorest of the poor, the person at the bottom of the pyramid, is duly served first with energy access and with a better quality of life. While speaking at Seminar on Power & Coal during Make in India Week in Mumbai today, Shri Piyush Goyal said, “The efforts of Government have ushered the power sector in a new level of growth altogether which provides for the sector a possible investment opportunity, between 2015 & 2020, a five year period, of about $ 250 billion. When I extrapolate that to a 15 year programme until 2030 the coal, power and renewable sector alone provides $1 trillion opportunity. Infact the ADB has calculated a $ 2.3 trillion opportunity by 2035”. He further added, “when I talk about $1trillion investment by 2030, it’s a well defined area wise plan- what will go into transmission, what will opening of new mines, how will we bring technology into the coal sector, what will be our push towards energy efficiency, how are we going to bring in new coal generating plants which will be environmentally superior plants, what will we going to do about our gas based plants, how are we going to ensure the distribution sector works as a vibrant profitable business for the state discoms- all of these have been drawn out in great details. It provides great opportunity for the investors both in India and International.”
Referring to the availability of sufficient power and coal today in the country, Shri Goyal said “ we have to look at future and we are engaged in a massive roll out across the value chain of the power sector, be it the fuel availability, be it the expansion of our generating power, massive investment on the transmission side- to ensure that the nation has a seamless grid across the length and breadth of this large country and adequate support to strengthen the distribution sector and make it truly vibrant, reduce losses at the distribution level and make economies of scale with large scale roll out of these programmes helps us keep tariff low, competitive, affordable.” The Minister added, “This government believes that we will have to focus our energies on efficiency; we will have to address the severe problem of losses surplus labor being used, losses in the transmission side, power thefts. These are the issues that are focus of this government, more particularly energy efficiency across the country. So that without the stress on the consumers, we can turn around the power sector, we can start ensuring adequate power supply to every farmer, every citizen of this country.” Shri Piyush Goyal reiterated that UDAY is not designed on the back of subsidies or government intervention; it is a bottom up programme, its being conceptualize by the joint endeavors of all stakeholders of the power sector. Through UDAY as a fulcrum of the next generation of growth in the power sector, Shri Goyal said “ we do see going forward, a paradigm shift, a transformational change in the investment climate in the power sector. And our efforts have been through a series of reforms like UDAY, Tariff Policy, resetting of renewable energy vision, coal block auctions, rationalalization of coal, coal swapping policy, right grading of coal etc are designed to keep power tariffs low and ensure that the consumer in India continue to be served effectively.”
Talking about rural electrification, Shri Piyush Goyal said, “I am delighted that Prime Minister has taken up the task of rural electrification on mission mode and assured that in 1000 days (when he announced on 15th August 2015), there will be no village in this country without electricity access and I am even delighted to inform all of you that the ministry has taken the challenge to the next level and committed to the Indian that each of this 18,452 villages will be electrified in 730 days not the thousand days. Nearly one- third of the work is already done and as we speak about 5279 villages have already being electrified in last 10 months. By 31 March 2016, we expect over 6500 villages to be electrified and by 31st March 2017, our efforts will be to almost to electrify 80 to 90% unelectrified of villages across the country. By 2019, the effort is to ensure that every home gets electricity connection, most of them through the grid some of them through distributed energy and micro grids.”
Shri Piyush Goyal said that our global share of LED consumption has gone up from 0.1% to 12% in just 2 years on the global scale and the LED programme will save 100 bn units of electricity and $6.5 bn every year for consumers. Shri Goyal stated that he is happy by the fact that India has surplus power and surplus coal because that is where we can ensure the success of our programmes to bring power to every individual, every business, ensure adequate power for our farmers and that’s the enabler which will help the Make in India programme to scale new heights of success and invite people from all across the world to come and invest in India, to come and enjoy the huge market demand that a billion plus aspirational Indians offer to the world.