MUMBAI: Promising action that will help curb India's dependence on coal, Environment and Forests Minister, Jairam Ramesh, said India will have at least 6,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2017, bulk of which will be put up by the private sector.

Ramesh said the Jawarharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, launched in the national capital last week, has planned 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022 and intends to drive down costs through a rapid scale-up of capacity.

"In the next two-years, we are not going to be seeing huge amounts of capacity but by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2017), I expect to see at least 5,000-6,000 MW of capacity," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here yesterday.

This is higher than the target of 4,000 MW of solar power by 2017 envisaged in the solar mission document. "We want to replicate the mobile telephony revolution in solar energy till the cost of solar energy continues to fall very drastically," Ramesh said.

The government will create necessary environment to attract project developers to invest in research and domestic manufacturing of solar power equipment. "It's a country-wide mission including the private and public sector. In fact, the bulk of the 20,000 MW will come from private industry, not from the government," he said.

India is endowed with vast solar energy potential. About 5,000 trillion kWh (kilowatt-hour) per year energy is incident over India's land area with most parts receiving 4-7 kWh per sq metre per day.

Hence, both technology routes for conversion of solar radiation into heat and electricity, namely, solar thermal and solar photovoltaics, can effectively be harnessed providing huge scalability for solar power in India.

The government's initiatives in the sector will benefit companies like Tata BP Solar, Reliance Solar and Moser Baer Photo Voltaic Ltd by unlocking the huge potential in renewable energy, Ramesh said.

Engineering and equipment firms like Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and Lanco would also be indirectly benefited. Apart from moving toward a greener economy, India's ambitious solar programme will also give the country a better bargaining power in climate talks on the global stage.

Ramesh said the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) will meet in New Delhi on January 23 and 24 to take forward talks on climate change and "work out a coordinated approach post-Copenhagen", which met a disappointing end in December 2009.

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