According to India's National Newspaper, The Hindu, the Indian government has finalized a draft for their "National Solar Mission" that will aim to see an installed solar generation capacity of 20,000 Megawatts (MW) by 2020, of 100,000 MW by 2030 and of 200,000 MW by 2050."
Note: While The Hindu is reporting that the plan calls for 1 million MW by 2030 and 2 million MW, this appears to be a mistake.
Anna da Costa at the Worldwatch Institute writes that the leaked draft document has "the potential to revolutionize India's energy sector and the draft plan will include measures for rapidly expanding the use of small-scale photovoltaic panels, solar lighting systems, and commercial-scale solar plants, in order to drive down costs and encourage domestic solar manufacturing"
India currently has a installed solar capacity of only 3 (MW), so a stated increase of such a significant amount as that being proposed is profound to say the least. Public funding for this aggressive timeline will be substantial with the Solar Mission document stating that the Indian Government will invest somewhere around Rs. 85,000 crore to Rs. 105,000 crore over the next 30 years.
India’s solar resources are among the most abundant in the world, with more than 1 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of land spread beneath an average 250–300 clear sunny days a year.
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