Optimistic solar power providers in India are predicting that a change in government in May could deliver a massive boost in solar spending and infrastructure over the next decade.
The Indian government already has a reasonably ambitious target of installing 20GW of solar by 2022. But Vineet Mittal, the managing director of Welspun Energy, the country’s biggest solar power provider, says that target could rise 10 fold if Narendra Modi, the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is elected in May.
Modi is currently leading in polls, and is credited with making his home state of Gujarat the leader in installations in the India.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he (Modi) came out with a 200,000-megawatt target by 2025,” Mittall told Bloomberg.
Modi pioneered the first incentives for large scale solar power in 2009 and Bloomberg says he is signaling a clean energy revolution if he gets to power.
“We have to focus on generating more power from our abundant renewable energy resources,” Modi said last month. “The time has arrived for a saffron revolution, and the color of energy is saffron.”
Modi pledged an energy overhaul that would rival the so-called green and white revolutions in the 1900s. Those turned India into a major agricultural exporter and the world’s top milk producer
Gujarat enjoys the highest take up of solar in India, 40 per cent of the country’s capacity of nearly 3,000MW, and it boasts the least blackouts in the country.
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