Embassy of India

Berlin

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

India formally joins IRENA

 

Ambassador of India, H E Mrs Meera Shankar signed the Statute on the establishment of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) with India as one of the founding members at a brief ceremony held in the German Foreign Office on 17.3.2009. Speaking on the occasion, Secretary of State Mr. Heinrich Tiemann said that IRENA is a milestone on the road towards a future-oriented energy supply to cope with the challenges of climate change and the growing scarcity of fossil fuels. The objective of IRENA is to reduce the gap between the enormous potential for renewable sources of energy and their current low market share in energy consumption through out the world by advising its members on creating the right frameworks, building capacity and improving financing and the transfer of technology and know-how for renewable energies. With India signing the agreement today, 77 countries out of the 124 countries that attended the Founding Conference in January 2009 have now signed the IRENA Statute.

 

Ambassador Meera Shankar remarked that Government of India attaches great importance to the promotion of renewable energy resources and has established a separate “Ministry of New and Renewable Energy” for implementation of this objective. Ambassador stated that renewable energy constitutes around 8 % of India’s current generating capacity, but this goes up to almost 30 % if large hydro projects are included as renewables. India ranks high globally in terms of total wind energy production. There is also immense potential for solar energy as India has no shortage of sunlight through out the year. However, the challenge is to bring down the cost of solar energy and make the technology more robust. In the field of bio-mass energy, India would like to find ways to effectively convert plant and animal wastes into energy. Development is the main priority for a country like India and policies related to renewable energy have to be in harmony with our development imperatives. Ambassador expressed the hope that IRENA would act as a catalyst to promote action and concrete steps in this regard.