India's energy plan aims to improve lives with less carbon footprint: PM

The world's third biggest oil importer has implemented a series of reforms in recent years, including setting up a gas trading exchange and granting marketing freedom to producers, to boost its local

India's energy plan aims to ensure energy justice to improve lives of citizens but with a smaller carbon footprint, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Monday.

The Prime Minister was making the inaugural address at 4th India Energy Forum by CERAWeek, in which he took part through video conferencing.

He further said India believes that access to energy must be affordable and reliable so that socio-economic transformation can take place.

"India's energy plan aims to ensure energy justice that too while following global commitments for sustainable growth. This means, more energy to improve the lives of Indians but with a smaller carbon footprint," Modi said.

"India believes that access to energy must be affordable and reliable. That is when socio-economic transformation can take place. We view the energy sector as one that empowers people and furthers Ease of Living. India achieved 100 per cent electrification, LPG coverage increased, these changes particularly helped our rural areas, middle class, and women," he added.

PM Modi said despite this year being challenging for the energy sector, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, India has been projected to emerge as a leading consumer of energy in the next few years.

"This year has been challenging for the energy sector, demand fell by almost 1/3rd, there has been price instability, investment decisions impacted. Leading global bodies project there will be a contraction in global energy demand in the next few years also but they project India to emerge as a leading consumer. India is said to nearly double its energy consumption in the long term," he said.

The Prime Minister cited the example of the aviation sector, which according to him is projected to be the largest and fastest-growing aviation market in terms of domestic aviation in the world.

Speaking about the Centre's push to the renewable sources of energy, he said, "Our energy sector will be growth-centric, industry-friendly and environment conscious. That is why India is among the most active nations in furthering renewable source of energy."

He also enlisted the savings made in the last few years by opting for low energy consuming appliances across the country and asserted that this made India an attractive investment centre for clean energy projects.

"In the last six years, more than 360 million LED bulbs have been distributed. The cost of LED bulbs has also reduced ten-fold. In the last six years, over 1.1 crore smart LED street lights were installed, these have enabled an estimated energy saving of 60 billion units per year. The estimated greenhouse emission reduction with this program is over 4.5 crore tonnes of carbon-di-oxide annually. Along with this we also saved around Rs 24,000 crore annually. It is due to such interventions that reports have said that India is the most attractive, emerging market for clean energy investment," PM Modi said.

"We had aimed to increase the renewable energy installed capacity by 175 GW by 2022, we have further extended this goal to 450 GW by 2030. India has one of the lowest carbon emissions than the rest of the industrialised world, yet we will continue to make efforts to fight climate change," he further added.