The Government of India is reportedly planning to partner with domestic e-commerce companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon.in to increase the use of solar energy. Towards this, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has contacted the online retailers for listing solar energy products such as water heaters, lanterns, chargers, house systems, lights and coolers in their sites, a senior government official informed.
"We have been writing to Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal to showcase more solar products as none can match their reach today. We want to leverage this opportunity," Livemint quoted the official as saying.
The move to promote solar products comes in the wake of the government's decision to give higher priority for renewable energy in its energy security agenda.
The government has significantly increased its solar energy target to 100,000 megawatts (MW) by 2022 from an earlier 20,000 MW. Besides, the government also aims to achieve 60,000MW of wind power capacity by the same year, which needs a total investment of nearly Rs10 trillion in the renewable energy sector.
MNRE has been taking various initiatives to increase the usage of green energy in the country. It rolled out a new wind resource atlas on Wednesday to promote larger usage of wind power in the country.
"The new Indian Wind Atlas is an important online GIS (Geographic Information System) tool for the identification of regional and local wind energy potential in India. It contains average annual values of Wind Speed (m/s), Wind Power Density and Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF) calculated for an average 2 MW turbine at 100 m," the power ministry said in a statement.
India is the world's third biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the US and China, with renewable energy accounting for just 13 percent of the total installed power capacity of the country.
