Integrated energy policy soon to meet growing demand: NITI
The national institution for transforming India (NITI) Aayog would soon come out with an energy policy to meet the country’s growing energy demand and has begun consultations with concerned ministries to draw a blueprint in this regard.
Addressing a workshop on India Energy Outlook on Monday, the Aayog’s vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said the proposed energy policy would focus on an integrated approach in harnessing the potential of power generation through solar, wind, gas and coal to meet the country’s energy demand. “(We) will have a national energy policy. We are in discussions with our colleagues in different ministries,” Arvind Panagariya said. The country needs to rapidly expand its energy market, as one-fourth of its people are still without electricity. “India is set to become the fastest growing economy in the world.
We need to take away the subsidies from rich people and use that money to provide clean energy to poor people,” the Aayog’s vice-chairman reasoned. Exuding confidence on the country’s economy, Panagariya said both the government and its policy planners are working towards a growth rate of 8-10 per cent in the next 15 years. The government in the Economic Survey had projected a growth rate of 8-8.5 per cent in the current financial year and in double-digit in the coming years.
Taking a dig at the World Bank, Panagariya said the multi-lateral lending agency maintains air-conditioning at a huge atrium in the US which seats only a handful of people.
“In World Bank’s atrium (in US), at any given point there are only a dozen people, but that huge atrium is heated in winters and air-conditioned in summers, which is a huge inefficient use and for the World Bank to turn-around and lecture us is quite paradoxical,” an agency report quoted him as telling mediapersons at the end of the workshop.
