7TH WORLD RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY CONGRESS AND EXPO-2016

The 7th World Renewable Energy Technology Congress and Expo-2016 (WRETC-2016) was held on August 21–23, 2016 in New Delhi and was organized by the Energy and Environment Foundation and supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India, and UNESCO, New Delhi Office. The event served as an excellent energy platform for the global renewable energy industry to address various industry issues, including innovations, new technologies, investment opportunities, and project financing. The theme of the event was ‘Renewable Energy: What Works’.

Shri Upendra Tripathy, Secretary, MNRE, delivered the inaugural address and highlighted the importance of promoting renewable energy, green technology for its sustainability. The Energy and Environment Foundation awarded the prestigious ‘Energy and Environment Foundation Global Excellence Awards 2016’ in the renewable energy sector to Shri Upendra Tripathy, Secretary, MNRE; Smt. Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson State Bank of India; Mr Ramesh Kymal, CMD, Gamesa India; Mr Walter Howard, CEO Alter NRG Corporation; and Dr Bibek Bandyopadhyay, Former Advisor, MNRE.

The 7th WRETC-2016 conference deliberated on various issues, such as ‘Renewable Energy Innovative Financing’; ‘Renewable Regulatory Issues—Roadmap’; ‘Smart Cities, Energy Storage and Electric Vehicles’; ‘Role of Mini Grid for Enabling 24×7 Power for All’; ‘Waste-to-Energy, Make-in-India: Developing Solar-Wind Industries’; ‘Solar Rooftop-Emerging Opportunities’; ‘Bio-Energy’; ‘Biomass: Future Energy for Transportation’; and ‘Indo-Swiss Cooperation in Clean Energy: Promoting Innovation’. The conference and expo was attended by national and international delegates. The conference brought together leading international and domestic players, policymakers, government officials, and technocrats on a common platform. The concurrent conference sessions comprised of interesting workshops, interactive panel discussions on ‘Energy: UN Sustainable Development Goals’; ‘Greening Smart Grid: Renewable Energy Integration’; and Thought Leadership Summit on ‘Renewable Energy: Skill Development and Capacity Building’. The conference served as an important gateway for worldwide new energy companies to access the Indian market to foster partnerships and collaborations with local players.

Some of the main features of the resolutions adopted in the conference are as follows:

• Renewable energy has come to the centre-stage with the support given by various governments through setting up of RE targets and through their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). It is time now to identify initiatives that work and scale these up to achieve these targets.
• Financial commitments and innovative financial measures will be essential for large scale adoption of RE options.
• The market based mechanism for spread of RE needs to be further strengthened by addressing policy and regulatory issues so as to accelerate the ‘ease of doing RE business’.
• The sharp reduction in the cost of the solar PV modules and consequently the energy, provides an opportunity to boost storage options in tandem with Solar PV through various innovative mechanisms.
• Given the large opportunities that would be created by the RE markets, development of requisite manpower and generation of employment thereof is essential to sustain the momentum that has been generated.

Source: MNRE