• 16 hours ago
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00:00you
00:30you
00:49But there is a acceptance of this new field in India
00:57which over the years if you see over centuries and generations has always
01:05been very conscious of the environment and responsible to nature. This new
01:13awareness that we see in today's world which translates to renewable energy
01:18which translates to respecting the challenges of climate change is not new
01:25to India. I often recall that when Vice President Al Gore had come out with his
01:31thesis inconvenient truth many years ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi who at that
01:39time was the Chief Minister of Gujarat came out with his own offering to the
01:44world convenient action. The inconvenient truth was known to every Indian for
01:52generations. We knew that unless we respect and recognize the importance of
01:59nature one day it'll come home to bite and while the Western world may have
02:08come to realize the problems of the inconvenient truth maybe 30 years ago or
02:1420 years ago we in India believe in action and I still remember in the early
02:21days as Chief Minister of Gujarat when Prime Minister Modi adopted solar power
02:28and Gujarat was one of the first states to start developing solar power farms to
02:35produce solar power there was a lot of criticism. It was expensive at that point
02:41of time scale being small and most of it imported the cost of power at some point
02:48of time had gone as high as probably 16 or 18 rupees per kilowatt hour but Prime
02:54Minister Modi at that time Chief Minister Modi recognized the importance of putting
03:02your feet into the water before you can swim and he recognized that unless we
03:09make some humble beginnings even at a much higher cost we'll never be able to
03:15aspire for much bigger targets and look at the transformation of the India story.
03:23Ajay Mathur has been a part of this journey at least all through the 10 years
03:29that I've been in government. He was the Director General of the Bureau of Energy
03:33Efficiency when I became the Minister for Power and Renewable Energy way back
03:39in 2014 and I still remember some of the wonderful initiatives that Prime Minister
03:47Modi had encouraged us to launch whether it was the reverse auctions which helped
03:56us bring down the cost of solar power, wind power, all these sources of power
04:01from very high cost to as low as 2 rupees 41 paisa at that time just about 2 rupees 41 paisa
04:13per kilowatt hour and from those high levels when I came in I think even at that time wind
04:21power was at about five and a half rupees and solar power was anywhere between five
04:27and six or seven rupees different parts of the country and I still recall hours and hours of
04:34meetings running into late night engagements with various stakeholders to see how we can
04:42make it more competitive, make it a compulsive case for our distribution companies also to
04:50accept because unless we were able to bring down the prices to below the cost of thermal power,
04:58below the cost of coal...