UK to support India's renewable energy initiatives

Amber Rudd, UK secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change says they are impressed with the Indian leadership's focus on the renewable energy

With the Centre setting ambitious targets for the renewable energy sector, the UK government is looking at collaboration in this regard. Talking to Business Standard, Amber Rudd, UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, said her country was impressed with the Indian leadership’s focus on renewable energy.

“This is very important worldwide, as everyone is talking about deliverables in the coming climate change summit in Paris. The fact that India provides such strong leadership and the PM talks about it sends a strong message,” she said.

Her government, she said, was ready to collaborate with the Indian government on several sectors, starting with offshore wind power and carbon-capture technology.

“We are more interested in investing more money in technology and innovation. We want to work closely with the government to collaborate on several projects such as off-shore wind,” she added.

During her trip this week, Rudd met officials from several departments, including environment, power and new and renewable energy. She also interacted with Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and Jitendra Singh, minister of state in the Prime Minister’s office.

“Part of the reason for my visit is we can ensure some agreements with some of the departments, ahead of PM Modi’s visit to the UK. Also, we can showcase that we are already working together on certain projects, especially renewable,” she said.

The UK government also announced during her visit an investment of 500,000 pound to contribute towards energy access for all in India. This, the ministry said, would help develop a system to put people on the grid.

Rudd is looking forward to commitments at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, slated to be held in Paris in December. The Indian government has given an in-principle approval a target of 20,000 Mw of solar energy by 2022. Senior government officials have said this could be scaled up.

“When we make those commitments, we will see a lot of private companies working towards that in countries such as India and China so that they deliver on their renewable targets. It is only not about governments, but also about mobilising the private sector,” Rudd said.

“The ministries we spoke to today said they want to learn from our success story in offshore wind and I want to learn from the success story of solar here…We want to showcase the fact that you can grow your economy and cut your carbon emissions at the same time. Delivering on carbon cuts will cost money but help the economy,” she added.