Use of solar power will accelerate the Railway's mission to achieve the goal of becoming 'Net Zero Carbon Emission Railway'

September 1, 2020 · Param IAS Team

Environment & Biodiversity

  • In order to achieve its objective of becoming 100% self-sustainable for all it’s power needs and also to contribute to national solar power goals, Indian Railways has solarised more than 960 stations till date .
  • It may be noted that Indian Railways had recently organised a meet of  leading solar power developers who had  shared their expectations of being partners in the journey of Indian Railways to become “net zero carbon emitter” before 2030.
  • Indian Railways is set to produce solar energy for meeting all it’s energy consumption needs of more than 33 billion units by 2030.  
  • Current annual requirement is about 20 billion units.
  • Indian Railways has a mega plan for installing solar plants of 20 GW capacity by utilising its vacant land by 2030.
  • Some of the Stations solarised are Varanasi, New Delhi,Old Delhi , Jaipur ,Secunderabad , Kolkata , Guwahati , Hyderabad , Howrah etc. 
  • About 51,000 hectare vacant land available with Indian Railways and is now ready to  extend all support to the developers for installing solar power plants on Railway’s vacant un-encroached land. 
  • It may be noted that Railways is also set to achieve 100% electrification by the year 2023.
  • It may be noted that Indian Railways is committed to utilize solar energy for meeting its traction power requirement and become a complete ‘Green mode of transportation’.
  • This is in line with the recent directive of Hon’ble Prime Minister to solarise railway stations and utilize vacant railway land for Renewable Energy (RE) projects.
  • The use of solar power will accelerate the  Railways mission to achieve the goal of becoming ‘Net Zero Carbon Emission Railway’.
  • In order to achieve this, Indian Railways has developed a mega plan for installing solar plants of 20 GW capacity by utilizing its vacant land by 2030.