The Global Wind Energy Council wants to partner with India for offshore
wind development and has identified two states —Gujarat and Tamil Nadu —
for special focus. The Council, a global trade body comprising over 1,500 members from 70
countries, is providing a grant of Euro 4 million from European Union’s
Indo-European Cooperation on Renewable Energy Programme.
The Council today announced a 4-year project supported by the grant to
“look at the challenges and opportunities presented by offshore wind'',
says a press release from the Council. Globally, although onshore wind is now a mature, competitive and
mainstream energy generation source, offshore wind is still in a
relatively early stage of development. Most of the 6GW of capacity
installed is in the North Sea, Baltic and Irish Seas. The only other
substantial market is in China, although there is some movement in
Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States.
“The project is being launched when the Ministry of New & Renewable
Energy is also working towards the introduction of National Offshore
Wind Energy Policy in India," Alok Srivastava, Joint Secretary of the
Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, has said in the release.As with all new technologies, the capital costs are high, and there is
still a great deal of technical and management learning required to
bring the costs down to competitive levels. One of the goals of the
project will be to learn as much as possible from the European
experience to ensure that when India ventures offshore, it does so in
the most effective way possible.
The partners bring a wealth of experience to the project: The World
Institute for Sustainable Energy, based in Pune, will host the project
management unit, and focus on Gujarat; The Center for Study of Science,
Technology and Policy, based in Bangalore will focus on the State of
Tamil Nadu; DNV-GL, the world’s largest renewable energy consultancy,
will, through its Bangalore-based subsidiary, provide its long expertise
in the offshore industry, the release says.
Source Business Line
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