Investments worth Rs 17 lakh crore have been made in power sector in the last nine years with the capacity under construction being worth the investment of a further Rs 17.5 lakh crore, Union minister R K Singh said on Friday.

Speaking at a media summit, he talked about the rising power demand and that in 2014, the peak demand was around 130 GW, while today it is in the region of 243 GW.

“By 2030, the peak electricity demand is likely to cross 400 GW, indicating the fast growth of the economy. The demand grew at 9% last year, and is growing at 10% this year. On a daily basis, the demand is 8 GW to 10 GW more than the same day previous year. There is no other market as big and growing as fast as us,” he added.

Union Minister said that electricity is the most important infrastructure which is a sine qua non for development, observing that the one major distinguishing feature between a developing and a developed country is that in a developed country, there is no load-shedding.

“No country can develop if it does not have sufficient power. The power shortage in India has come down from around 4.5% in 2014 to less than 1% today. We have ensured universal electricity access, connecting 29 million homes in 19 months, which the International Energy Agency called the largest and fastest expansion of energy access in the history of the power sector,” he added.

He told that the government added about 194 GW of power capacity, out of which around 107 GW is renewables.

We increased the power transfer capacity from 36 GW to 117 GW today. We added 3,000 substations, upgraded 4000 substations, added about 5.5 lakh circuit km. of LT lines, 2.5 lakh circuit km. of HT lines, about 7.5 lakh transformers and sundry other equipment, he added.

As a result of all this, we were able to bring up rural power availability from 12.5 hours in 2015 to around 21 hours today and in urban areas to 23.8 hours, he contended.

Minister said the nation will add enough capacity to meet this burgeoning demand. “We will cross 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030. We already have 7 million tonnes of green hydrogen manufacturing lined up.”

The Minister said that India is leading the change, being the only country which has achieved both NDCs, though our per capita emissions are one third of global average. “We achieved our commitment to reduce emissions intensity by 2019, 11 years ahead of the target year of 2030.

He further highlighted that the government is coming out with a Production Linked Incentive Scheme for grid-scale storage which will further bring down the price of storage.