Alarmed with environmental hazards and rising fuel
imports, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) want telecom operators
to turn at least 50,000 towers onto solar energy immediately. MNRE asked telecom firms to turn 50,000
telecom towers onto solar.
MNRE informed that a cost to turn a tower onto
solar energy is somewhere close to Rs 200,000. "They (telecom companies)
are also disinclined to disclose their carbon footprint too.
Minister of State for Communications and IT, while
replying to a question in Lok Sabha, has however recently admitted that
government has so far not conducted any study to assess the quantum of carbon
emission from these towers.
India, as per telecom watchdog, has more than
585,000 towers which consumes 5.12 billion litters of diesel fuel each year.
While government allows subsidy on diesel procurement, despite, organizations
such as Greenpeace have been campaigning to eschew it.
Telecom regulator TRAI in its new guidelines has
asked telecom service providers that at least 50 per cent of all rural towers
and 20 per cent of all the urban towers needs to be operated with hybrid power
(renewable energy and grid power) resources by 2015.
The telecom sector in India has witnessed unparalleled
growth by global standards in the last decade and continues to be one of India’s
biggest success stories. The Indian mobile industry is one of the largest
markets today in terms of subscriber base1,
experiencing
growth of an additional 10 million subscribers every
month in 2013, albeit very low ARPU (~EUR 2.40 per month), and significant churn
rates. Due to favourable market conditions and the attractive renewable
solution business case for telecoms, most of the telecom Vendors now operating in India propose, in their
portfolios, solar or wind tailored solutions
