Biography
Biography: Suresh C Bajpai
Abstract
Energy is the prime mover of economic growth, and is vital to sustaining a modern economy and society. Future economic growth significantly depends on the long-term availability of energy from sources that are affordable, accessible and secure. India’s energy demand is expected to double by 2030. In the face of its present energy constraints, the country needs to use its energy as efficiently as possible and generate more power through renewable energy. The Government of India launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) in 2010, with an aim to establish India as a global leader in solar energy and to deploy 20,000 MW of solar power capacity by 2022. JNNSM targets were to be achieved in three phases: Phase 1 (up to early 2013), Phase 2 (2013-17) and Phase 3 (2017-22). In the Phase 2 – Batch 1, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) auctioned total 750 MQ of solar projects divided in two categories – open and domestic with 375 MW in each. This had a strong interest with bids from 58 developers for 2,170 MW as against 750 MW capacity on offer. However, with new Government coming in May-2014, the targets were revised to 1,00,000 MW by 2022 on account of solar energy alone. Besides the national program, solar programs at the state level are also driving solar growth in the country. At present, India has only around 2.8 GW of solar modules and 1.4 GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity. Significant portion of it remains underutilized, as the domestic manufactures fail to compete with imported solar PV price. It is generally agreed that, unless the market is backed by aggressive R&D, this growth may not continue and solar PV will not achieve the potentially substantial contribution that it could make to energy supplies. Further, a mechanism that seamlessly integrates technological advances to industry on real-time basis and also supports the industry to take the technology risk would be important for India.