The requirement of energy outstripped demand long time back.
Based on statistics that clearly reveal how increasing use of renewable energy (RE) will translate into lesser use of fossil fuels, that has gone to damage climate and even threaten existence of life, our preference for RE increases by the day.
However even after much progress and attempts in the field of RE generation, RE remains a miniscule fraction of the total amount of energy that is being produced or is actually required.
The reasons behind such an imbalance of intention and supply of RE are lack of funds to put up an adequate level of infrastructure and new and efficient technologies on a mass scale.
For the past half century or so, India has worked hard to put in place present power production infrastructure which is largely based on non-renewable resources.
As power makes for an essential basic ingredient for living, development and growth life cannot be imagined or lived without power.
Therefore, it is evident that a switch to another resource, one which will be more environment-friendly will be the biggest challenge to human civilization besides of course controlling demographics.
So in the context of India this means replacing the entire power production infrastructure with a similar large scale one for power derived from wind, sun, run of the rivers, geo-thermal, nuclear, fuels from crops, wasted heat from industries, etc apart from increasing energy efficiencies of existing power plants.
The Government of India and various industries may focus themselves on bettering technologies, raising funds and providing with generation based incentives along with facilities for integration with electricity grids, yet there is one important point that seems to be missing their attention.
And this reserving space or land for RE infrastructure.
Land is becoming a fast decreasing commodity especially as India is fast competing with China for being the most populated countries of the world.
Already real estate rates in India, even with such under development around, are sensationally high than that in most parts of the developed world.
As far as laying down infrastructure for any sector is concerned India took many decades to reach the present levels.
Examples are to be found in development of coal power plants, telephone lines, roads, metros, etc that have been accomplished inch by inch in several years.
It would not be unwise to have similar expectations while laying down a huge scale of RE infrastructure.
Even recent cases of implementation of metros, hydro projects, highways, mining, etc have proved beyond doubt that land acquisition is a real challenge that will need to be encountered.
Therefore government mandates and policies will need to be framed that acknowledges such hurdles and therefore works toward pre empting these problems.
Acquisition and reservation of land or creation of land banks for RE will be an important criterion that will determine success of RE growth in India.
Added to the above will be examining the type of RE that should be adopted in a given region based on factors like availability of every resource and input.
Costs of land, energy consumption levels and patterns of the regional population, estimated increase in population densities, etc will be other factors that require exhaustive and detailed study to arrive at the kind of RE to be exploited in a specific place.
Since more per square meter land is required for every watt of solar and wind energy produced as compared to fossil fuel energy putting all that land to dual use can be another option that is worth studying.
In short the country’s RE infrastructure cannot be left to proliferate in a haphazard manner.
Indian government agencies could draw from their own experiences and various developed nations that have gone through various stages of sectoral development in the past century.
Massive scaling of “new energy” infrastructure will take time and past mistakes could be avoided just as we need to be more geared to take on unforeseen hurdles.