India invites Norway to invest in green transportation

India on Wednesday invited Norwegian collaboration in transforming India's logistics sector and help develop the massive infrastructure to green the Indian transportation system.

A senior Indian official invited investment in building environment friendly transport network from Norway, which has globally become the largest market for electric vehicles (EVs) and has embarked on the world's biggest "Green Coastal Shipping Programme".

"India is keen to work with Norway to create environment-friendly maritime clusters which are the next big thing in this area," Shipping Ministry Deputy Secretary Abhishek Chandra said at a seminar here organised by the Norwegian embassy on "How to Develop Green Transport in India".

"Not many companies from India have come forward in the tendering that we have already done for our shipping infrastructure," Chandra said, referring to the government's ambitious Sagarmala project for development of ports and water transportation and also an environment-friendly mode of mobility.

He said an amount of $20 billion had been spent in the recent development of India's shipping infrastructure.

Addressing the seminar, the Norwegian Ambassador to India, Nils Ragnar Kamsvag, said that over one third of all new cars sold in Norway were electric vehicles.

"Valuable lessons for India and Indian companies may be drawn from understanding customer behaviour in such a market," he said.

"We also have state of the art technology in green shipping with the world's first battery-driven ferry in operation and the world's largest fleet of LNG ships," he added.

Norway's National Transportation Programme envisages that all new vehicles after 2025 will be electricity-driven.

India's National Electric Mobility Mission Plan launched in 2013 aims at gradually ensuring a vehicle population of about 6-7 million electric and hybrid vehicles in India by 2020. The vision enunciated two years ago is for India to have 100 per cent EVs by 2030.

--IANS

bc/pgh/mr