Minister Nara Lokesh at the special plenary session on the energy sector:
We must become self-reliant in energy.
We will make AP the Saudi Arabia of clean energy.
The previous government had no policy stability.
Industry needs stable policies.
Green energy will power data centres.
5 lakh jobs created so far.
Visakhapatnam: India needs to become self-reliant in energy, and Andhra Pradesh will be built into a clean energy powerhouse like Saudi Arabia, said Nara Lokesh, Minister for Education and IT. He was speaking at a special plenary session at the CII Partnership Summit on "Powering India's Energy Future: Renewables and Green Hydrogen".
"I aspire to make Andhra Pradesh the Saudi Arabia of clean energy," the minister said. "We should not only generate clean energy from wind, solar and pumped storage projects. We should also convert that power into green molecules, supply them to the world, and meet our own energy needs at home. I hope the country follows the same approach."
Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said in his speech today that we depend on other countries for our energy needs. Given how global is changing, we need to become self-reliant in energy over the long term, and green molecules will play a key role in getting there.
The discussion on this topic helps us understand every stage, from energy production to consumption. We are already working on solar, wind and energy storage, and some companies are already producing green molecules. But we need to look at the whole process together, learning from experience in other parts of the world, so that India can move faster on this journey.
Power consumption in Andhra Pradesh has grown by about 30 percent over the last year. That growth came even before the MoUs now taking shape and the upcoming commercial production were counted. Some companies have already started commercial production, and others are under construction. Data centres are also coming up in the state. As a result, our power demand could nearly double by 2028.
Some of our baseload demand will have to be met from conventional sources. But Andhra Pradesh has good natural advantages. We have areas well suited to wind power and sites suited to pumped storage projects. Rayalaseema, in particular, gets plenty of sunshine, so solar is not a big problem for us.
The real challenge is how fast we can finish the projects. Our power demand looks certain to at least double in the next two and a half to three years. The challenge for companies that have already invested in Andhra Pradesh is how to supply green energy around the clock at competitive prices.
Daytime solar prices have fallen sharply, to around 50 paise a unit. But at night, prices go back up to Rs. 10 a unit. If the current price cap is removed, the price could even reach Rs. 30 a unit. So our main goal is to deliver round-the-clock green energy at competitive prices. The state government is pursuing this with great interest, and we have signed agreements to work on pumped storage projects too.
But these projects have to be built very fast. We cannot follow the conventional approach, where hydroelectric projects take five to seven years, because the investment cost is very high. If we don't build a project today, the same project could cost double three years from now. That is why the state government is giving priority to quick execution.
Between 2019 and 2024, Andhra Pradesh suffered because of a lack of policy stability. After 2024, our main step was to give industry that stability. We resolved all the long-pending issues, cleared up the problems with industry, and paved the way for a fresh start.
As a result, we added nearly 4.8 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in the state in just the last year. In the five years from 2019 to 2024, only 6 megawatts were added. Solar, wind, and pumped storage all need long-term investment, so the industry badly needs policy stability. The Central Government also has a very important role to play here.
Every year, around 3,000 TMC of water from the Godavari flows into the Bay of Bengal. That is roughly equal to the amount of water Brazil uses in a year. With the Polavaram project in AP, we are storing this water and putting it to use for agriculture, industry, and households.
Among the projects coming to Andhra Pradesh is the Google data centre. It is an air-cooled data centre, which means it uses air rather than water for cooling. It will also run on renewable energy.
We talk about moving from coal-based power to clean sources. But a thermal power plant producing one gigawatt uses nearly ten times more water than a data centre using the same amount of power. Hardly anyone discusses this, so these figures need to be understood. The People's Government is also fully committed to protecting the environment.
Data centres coming up in Andhra Pradesh are required to meet at least 80 percent of their power needs from green energy, and all of them will use air cooling. So we need to clear up the myths and worries young people have about data centres.
It is good that young people freely share their views on Instagram and Facebook. But they should also recognise that social media platforms like Instagram run on data centres too. In today's global politics, data centres are very important. In particular, it is vital to store India's data, including our citizens' personal data, within our own country.
We stay available to industrialists at all times and solve their problems. We are not limiting the solution to one company or one project. We are turning the way we solve a problem into a system. This is our government's approach. Using it, we have made significant progress in resolving many issues in the renewable energy sector. Our goal is to resolve all of them in the next six months.
We promised to create 20 lakh jobs in five years. So far, we have created about 5 lakh. Jobs are being created in many sectors, from agriculture and cement to cutting-edge fields like quantum computing.
Our goal now is to make sure the 25 industrial clusters identified in the state develop to their full potential. This is what sets Andhra Pradesh apart from other states. Power prices in our state are much lower than in comparable states, which puts us ahead in attracting investment. The minister said power tariffs will be reduced further in the future.
Also taking part in the programme were Roberto Bocca, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum, and Head of the Centre for Energy and Materials; Nikhil Dhingra, Joint Managing Director and CEO, ACME; Parag Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, ReNew; Dinesh Jagdale, President, Corporate Affairs and Retail Business, Suzlon; and Kuldeep Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, CleanMax.