$20-billion potential in renewable sector: Narendra Modi

India’s renewable energy deployment plans for the coming decade are likely to generate business opportunities worth $20 billion a year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday.

Inviting global investors to join what he termed India’s unparalleled journey towards expanding power generation capacity so that each citizen got access to electricity, he said the country’s renewable energy capacity was now the fourth largest in the world.

“In the last six years, we increased our installed renewable energy capacity by two and a half times… it is growing at the fastest speed among all major countries. Even when it was not affordable, we invested in renewable energy [and] now our investment and scale is bringing costs down,” Mr Modi said at the inaugural session of the Global Renewable Energy Investment Meeting and Expo.

“We are showing to the world that sound environmental policies can also be sound economics,” he said, urging global investors to consider tapping the recently approved production-linked incentive scheme for manufacturing high-efficiency solar power modules in the country.

“There are huge renewable energy deployment plans for the next decade. These are likely to generate business prospects of the order of around 20 billion dollars per year. I invite investors, developers and businesses to join India’s renewable energy journey”, he concluded.