India to double renewable energy capacity

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expects this capacity to hit 55,000 MW by 2017.

"It is proposed to double the renewable energy capacity in our country from 25000 MW in 2012 to 55000 MW by the year 2017," Singh said during the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial conference in New Delhi.

He said meeting this goal will include exploiting non-conventional energy sources such as solar, wind power and energy from biomass.

"We have set ourselves a national target of increasing the efficiency of energy use to bring about a 20 to 25 per cent reduction in the energy intensity of our GDP by 2020," he said.

He said, however, that the pace of expansion of new energy sources was limited by their being more expensive than conventional energy.

Ne noted that the cost of solar energy has nearly halved over the last two years but remains higher than the cost of fossil fuel based electricity.

“If the cost imposed by carbon emissions is taken into account, then solar energy is more cost effective, but it is still more expensive," he said.