Highlights of India's 20 GW solar energy plans

This week India launched a major solar initiative - the National Solar Plan: Our India correspondent sets out the highlights.

The US$19 billion National Solar Mission (or National Solar Plan) spread over 30 years aims to scale up solar power generation to 20GW by 2020;
The three-phased plan wants to generate 1-1.5 GW of solar power by 2012, 6-7 GW by 2017 and the rest by 2020;
It aims to cut down production costs of solar panels and spur domestic manufacturing. Money will be spent on incentives for production, installation and R&D;
The plan has a "near term" target of 100 MW, and a further long-term target of 100 GW by 2030, or 10%-12% of total power generation capacity estimated for that year;
Once implemented, the project will ensure large-scale deployment of solar generated power for both grid-connected as well as distributed and decentralised off-grid provision of commercial energy services;
India could cut about 42 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions with its new solar plan. An estimated 20 million solar lights are estimated to save 1 billion litres of kerosene per annum by 2020;
Solar-powered equipment and applications will be mandatory for hospitals, hotels and government buildings, and villages and small towns will be encouraged with micro financing;
The plan outlines a system of paying households for any surplus power from solar panels fed back into the grid. The target would be to provide access to lighting for 3 million households by 2012;
India will promote solar heating systems and use 40-50 million m² of area to install solar collectors in domestic, industrial and commercial sectors.

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