Government expects $1 tn investment in power by 2030

The central government said on Monday it expects nearly $1 trillion investment in India's power sector by the year 2030, including in coal and renewable energy.

"The efforts of the government have ushered the power sector in a new level of growth altogether which provides for the sector a possible investment opportunity between 2015 and 2020 of about $250 billion," union Power Minister Piyush Goyal said at the ongoing Make in India Week event here.

"When I extrapolate that to a 15-year programme, until 2030, the coal, power and renewable sector alone provides $1 trillion opportunity. In fact the ADB has calculated a $2.3 trillion opportunity by 2035," he added.

He said that in the short term till 2020 the renewable energy sector alone will attract investment of around $1 billion.

"Considering the initiatives taken by the government to enhance its renewable capacity, we estimate that the renewable sector alone will attract investment to the tune of $1 billion in the next five years," he said.

Declaring that the government believes it needs to focus energies on efficiency, the minister said: "We will have to address the severe problem of losses in surplus labour being used, losses in the transmission side, power thefts.

"Our focus on energy efficiency by increasing the use of LED will attract an investment of $5-7 billion. We have taken a huge step in replacing the street lights with LED bulbs. This initiative will help us save nearly 100 billion units of electricity and ensure nearly Rs.40,000 crore savings annually".

"We are confident that the initiatives like UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana), the tariff policy, efforts for bringing transparency in coal auction, the coal-swapping policy, the one nation one grid initiative will help us achieve this target," he added.