Japan to invest $ 20 billion in solar energy in India

India's plans to use solar energy massively have received a large amount of investment from Japan's SoftBank. Softbank Corporation believes that India can become a world leader in this area. This confidence prompted the Japanese to make an ambitious $ 20 billion contribution to India's solar energy sector through a joint venture with India's Bharti Enterprises and Taiwan's Foxconn.

Almost a quarter of the population of this country is still deprived of electricity and even large cities are experiencing power outages, so India is urgently increasing its generation of electricity. Equally urgent is the need to move to cleaner energy to reduce high levels of pollution from coal-fired power plants. It is solar energy that should help meet both of these requirements in a sun-rich country.

The government has set a target of 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022. This is a huge step forward with 3 GW being generated at the moment, which is less than 1 percent of the total energy balance. Softbank's investment in this sector is sufficient to shape the industry. An investment of this magnitude would cover a significant amount of 30 to 40 percent of this ambitious government target. The Adani Group of India has high hopes for solar energy, which is going to invest about US $ 10 billion in the construction of a solar station in the state of Rajasthan.

The Institute of Energy and Resources in New Delhi has helped reduce the cost of solar energy, which is currently only marginally higher than fossil fuel electricity, given the cost of imported coal to India. But problems remain. The head of Softbank said that the pace of joint venture projects will depend on the support of state authorities. Most of the problems are associated with acquiring land for projects as solar parks require large tracts of land. He said there are also concerns about inefficient distribution companies, as India's grids are not very stable and suffer huge losses.

The government plans to install 20 solar parks and is struggling to consolidate land for these solar parks, facing a very complex land ownership structure in India. Despite such obstacles, energy experts say India is moving forward to become one of the largest solar markets in the world.