India Gears Up To Increase Power Production By Renewable Energy Sources

 India is all set to increase its power generation capacity through cleaner, renewable energy sources. It has signed a Rs 630 crore loan pact and a Rs 13 crore grant agreement with the World Bank to help achieve this goal. In a statement, the World Bank said that The Shared Infrastructure for Solar Parks Project will finance Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Ltd (IREDA), to provide sub-loans to states to invest in various solar parks. The solar parks will be mostly under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) Solar Park Scheme, it said. Two solar parks with targeted installed capacities of 750 MW and 250 MW respectively is set to come up in Rewa and Mandsaur districts of Madhya Pradesh. Under this project, there are plans to establish solar parks in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana. Sameer Kumar Khare—Joint Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs stated that the government is committed to increasing the use of solar technology in the country and this project will help establish large-scale solar parks to generate  100 gigawatts (GW) of solar power out of a total renewable-energy target of 175 GW by 2022.