Railways to Call Tenders for 40GW Renewable Energy projects
(EPT): Union Railway Minister Ashwini vaishnaw stated, The Indian Railways will invite mega tenders for about 40GW of Renewable Energy in the next two to three years, He asked both local and global companies to be ready for large investments.
There is larger deal with clear energy in India to handle local weather change, the minister stated on the CII Partnership Summit 2021 on Monday, including that the railways is doing its bit to enhance the consumption of inexperienced energy for its necessities.
The Railways aims to become self-reliant in energy and, in this mission, it is also aspiring to become a complete “green mode of transportation”, Vaishnaw said.
He said that the country had already achieved a 100GW renewable energy target and is now moving to touch on our 200GW milestone.
Public investment of $80 billion in renewable energy was announced in the last Union budget and a lot of movement has happened in that direction, the minister said.
Even within the Railway Ministry, a capex of $15 billion is being undertaken that would be achieved by March next year, the minister said. Already, 60 per cent of the target has been achieved.
With a goal of transforming Indian Railways into Green Railways by 2030, the national transporter has taken a number of steps including increased electrification of routes, improving the energy efficiency of locomotives & trains and fixed installations, green certification for installations/stations, fitting bio-toilets in coaches and switching to renewable sources of energy.
Indian Railways has completed electrification of more than 40,000 route km All routes on BG (broad gauge) network have been planned to be electrified by December 2023.
Vaishnaw, who also holds the portfolios of communications, electronics, and IT, said India has progressed in manufacturing mobile phones, sharply bringing down their prices and making them affordable to people in the lowest income category. The government will come up with more initiatives to support manufacturing of all mobile components and chips in India, which would further reduce the cost of smartphones, he said.
Tenders of the railways are an enormous draw amongst infrastructure companies and contain massive investments. Indian Railways introduced tenders price ₹10,600 crore within the first quarter of the present fiscal and ₹17,700 crore within the second quarter, in accordance to India Ratings. In FY21, it introduced tenders for ₹55,100 crore and positioned orders for ₹65,500 crore. In the pre-pandemic 12 months FY20, tenders had been even larger at over ₹71,000 crore.