India best bet for 21st century, its solar revolution golden chapter: PM Modi

“Our country is the best bet for the 21st century.When 21st century’s history will be written, India’s solar revolution chapter will be written in gold,” PM said.

Underlining the recent mandate in Lok Sabha elections, the PM said that after 60 years, people for the third time consecutively elected the same government.“Behind our third term are huge aspirations of India. The youth… the women have faith that the wings their aspirations got in the last 10 years will take a new flight in this third term. Country’s poor, Dalit, downtrodden have faith that our third term will be a guarantee for their respectful lives. The 140 crore Indians are working to make the country a top economy quickly. This is not an isolated event but a part of a major mission…an action plan to make India developed by 2047. The trailer of how we are doing this is reflected in our decisions in the first 100 days of our government. Speed and scale too is reflected in our decisions,” he added. In last 100 days, 12 new industrial cities and eight high-speed corridors have been approved. Over 15 Made in India semi high speed Vande Bharat trains have also been launched, he said.

Need for green future

Stressing on green energy, the PM said, “A green future is the need and commitment of our state government. Being a developing economy, we had a valid excuse to stay outside these commitments. We could have said that we had no role in destroying the world but we didn’t. We are concerned about humanity’s future and have taken several steps for that. Among the G20 nations, India is the first such country to achieve Paris climate commitments nine years ahead. Even developed nations could not do that,” he added.

“We are making 700 million houses which is even more than some countries’ population. During the government’s last two terms, 400 million houses were constructed. Work on 300 million houses started with our government’s third term,” he added.

The PM also announced that 17 cities are being converted into model solar cities on the lines of Ayodhya. “Our attempt is that every house, every office, every service should run on solar energy,” he added.

“India is aiming to be a global leader in the green hydrogen sector also, for which a Rs 20,000 crore green hydro mission is launched,” he said.

Modi said that by decade end, India is targeting to achieve net zero emissions in rail operations. “In India, the railway network is huge. Daily at least 1 to 1.5 crore people travel by railways. We are going to achieve net zero emissions,” he stated.

To promote research, the PM said that the government has created a Rs 1 trillion fund. “Our aim is to promote high performance bio manufacturing…for this, a new bio E3 policy has been approved,” he added. “For offshore wind energy projects, a viability gap funding scheme has been started. We are going to spend Rs 7000 crore on this. Work on the 31000 megawatt hydrogen power generation project is on and Rs 12000 crore have been approved for this. India has diversity in terms of scale, capacity, potential and performance and the world also understands this,” he added.

Initiatives in state

Highlighting the initiatives taken in Gujarat, the PM asserted that starting from “milk revolution to sweet revolution… it all started from Gujarat and now the state is hosting an event which will bring about a solar revolution. Gujarat is the first state to create its solar power policy”.

In terms of climate challenge also, the state was way ahead in creating a ministry, he added. “When there was no talk of solar power in the world…at that time in Gujarat solar plants of hundreds of megawatts were being set up,” he said. By 2030, we are trying to achieve a 500 GW renewable energy target, he said, adding, “We are turning this green transition into a peoples’ movement.”

Lauding rooftop solar scheme, the PM said the results of PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana were “amazing”. “Under the scheme, at least 13 million families have registered out of which installation work has been done in 3 lakh houses,” the PM said.