Calling for a redoubling of efforts to ramp up the domestic energy supplies, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said that the country needs to rapidly increase energy consumption in order to achieve the 9 per cent growth target set for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-17).
“We have set for ourselves an ambitious target of 9 per cent annual growth in GDP in the 12th Five-Year Plan. This high rate of economic growth would require our energy consumption also to increase rapidly,” Dr Singh said on Wednesday.
Speaking on the National Energy Conservation Day here, he said that as India imports a large portion of its overall energy needs, “it is of vital importance that we redouble our efforts both to increase the domestic supply of energy and to reduce the energy intensity of our GDP.” High energy intensities indicate a high price or cost of converting energy into economic output. The Prime Minister said that since India is largely dependent on fossil fuels, any improvement in the energy efficiency of thermal power generation plants would help reduce energy intensity of the national GDP. “To this end, we must encourage increased use of super critical and ultra-super critical technologies for power generation,” he said.
The National Solar Mission aims to generate 20,000 MW of solar power by 2020. “Successful implementation of the National Mission...would lead to annual fuel saving of about 23 million tonnes oil equivalent — in coal, gas and petroleum products — along with an expected avoided capacity addition of over 19,000 MW,” Dr Singh said.