Some 25,000 villages in India to get solar energy by 2012: Minister
New Delhi, Delhi, India, Aug 22, 2007
Source: IndiaPRWire.com
http://www.indiaprwire.com/businessnews/20070822/24040.htm
Some 25,000 villages in India will get solar energy by 2012 as part of the government’s plan to promote clean energy in the country, Minister for New and Renewable Energy Vilas Muttemwar said here Wednesday. ‘With such a vast pool of renewable resources available, the government wants to provide energy in every village and lighting in every house,’ Muttemwar said in his address at an event to mark Energy Day in memory of late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
‘India is blessed with plenty of renewable energy sources such as solar, bio-energy, wind and hydel energy,’ he told the gathering at the function organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) at the Talkatora Indoor Stadium. He said as per his ministry’s assessment, around 25,000 villages in the country could not be electrified with conventional sources of energy due to technical reasons.
‘So, we are planning to connect all of them with solar and bio-energy,’ he told the audience that included Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and TERI director-general R.K. Pachauri. Dikshit said her government was keen on keeping the environment of the national capital clean and was accordingly promoting the use of renewable energy sources, especially solar energy and biomass. ‘In can say that because of various steps taken by our government, Delhi has become greenest city of the country.’
Encouraging people especially children to increase the use of renewable energy to protect the environment, Dikshit said the Rajiv Gandhi Akshay Urja Diwas, serves to educate and mobilise people across the country for environmental protection, to inspire action on personal, community, national and international levels. ‘Through voluntary action, each of us can join in building a productive land in harmony with nature.’