Visiting UNSW this week, Mr Piyush Goyal,India’s Minister for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy, said more effective and affordable energy solutions were required, stressing a one-size-fits-all approach would not work in his rapidly modernising nation of 1.2 billion people.
The minister was accompanied by officials from India’s ministries of coal, new and renewable energy, and petroleum and natural gas, as well as a business delegation. All were interested in exploring partnership opportunities with UNSW’s world-leading photovoltaics and resources programs.
In order to succeed in the Indian context, Minister Goyal said new technologies had to “scale up” in a way that was affordable when compared with coal-fired energy.
“We really need to change the thinking and change the viewpoint, making it more focused on competitiveness with thermal power,” he told the roundtable. “Otherwise certainly it’s going to be a challenge in India to sell this.”
“That is what the Indian public is demanding – more and more competition, more and more effective solutions that are going to be affordable.”
The minister said universities would be key to unlocking this challenge.
“I see education as the fulcrum of any greater engagement on a wider horizon,” he said.
“It also starts from people of the two countries getting to know each other better: understanding each other, working together with each other, and I’m sure that universities such as [UNSW] can play a very important role in that.”
India, which is currently ranked 10th in the world for solar, and targeting 100 gigawatts of solar energy by 2022 with a significant rooftop rollout on the cards, offered significant opportunities in the photovoltaics sector, Minister Goyal said.
“If cost can be made more economical, more viable, if more research is being done in that area, and particularly if manufacture shifts to India it could possibly become more competitive and open up big business opportunities.”
His Excellency Mr Navdeep Suri, High Commissioner of India to Australia, said collaboration between resources superpower Australia and sun-blessed India on energy had long been a “marriage waiting to happen”.
“We know that there is much that we can work on,” he said.
