New Delhi, Oct 7 (KNN) To bring together various market players and catalyze cutting-edge PV manufacturing in India, NITI Aayog, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE), and Invest India jointly organized a global symposium ‘India PV Edge 2020’ on October 6, 2020.

It was one of its kind platform for global cutting-edge technology providers, equipment makers, and PV champions to present their technologies to the Indian stakeholders who are drawing up their PV manufacturing plans and collaborate, thus boosting the ‘Make in India’ campaign.

The participating companies also had the opportunity to hear from the Indian policymakers involved in developing manufacturing schemes. Around 60 prominent Indian and global CEOs attended the event.

The symposium consisted of three sessions. The first session was the Plenary Session, in which India’s most prominent policy makers highlighted India’s strong impetus on renewable energy, the investment climate and the country’s ambition and opportunities in solar manufacturing.

The second session included three parallel pitching sessions on wafer / cell, module / production equipment and BOM. 21 experts from across the world gave a snapshot of the future of solar manufacturing.

The third session - “Investment Conclave” brought in large investors like IFC, Goldman Sachs, Black Rock, SBI, and climate funds to catalyze investment momentum in cutting edge PV technologies.

R.K. Singh, Hon’ble Minister for Power (IC), and Minister for New and Renewable Energy (IC) stated “India has largest RE growing capacity in the world. India had promised on sidelines of COP-21 that by 2030, 40 % of the country’s energy capacity will be from Non-Fossil Fuel sources.  We are already at 38.5 % and by 2030, 60% of our energy capacity is expected to be from Non-Fossil fuel sources. He further said that we are on our way to achieve our targets of 175 GW of RE capacity by 2022 and 450 GW of RE by 2030.”

Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog said “We are convinced that PV technology improvements will exceed general market expectations and will be the key anchor towards reducing the Solar deployment costs. India should innovate in every part of the value chain and strategically collaborate with global innovators to take a generation leap in Solar PV manufacturing.”

V.K. Saraswat highlighted that “cutting-edge giga-scale solar manufacturing stands on three pillars: Disruptive PV chemistries (Pillar 1), Manufacturing by custom-engineered advanced production equipment (Pillar 2), and utilization of innovative BOM components like special glasses and coatings (Pillar 3)”.

Rakesh Sarwal, Additional Secretary, NITI Aayog, thanked the dignitaries and emphasized that “India cannot be a global manufacturing hub of advanced PV without developing strong global scale R&D capabilities and strategic partnerships.”

As governments set out for economic revival, their recovery plans must be geared towards greening the infrastructure. With a growing and gargantuan appetite for energy, India has a unique role to play in re-building a more sustainable world.

India PV Edge 2020 has served as one small step towards that ambition and will go a long way in making India the giga-scale manufacturing destination for breakthrough PV technologies.