PANAJI
The renewable energy sources fad has seemingly got to Goa's Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar who on Friday made an unusually high-pitched case for switching over to e-vehicles and solar energy sources.
"If electrical vehicles are used across India, pollution will be controlled," Dhavalikar said and also suggested it could be an answer to tackling the high costs of conventional fossil fuels.
He was speaking at an official function organised jointly by the Department of New and Renewable Energy and the Goa Energy Development Agency (GEDA) to hand over e-vehicles of the Tata group's Convergence Energy Services Ltd, at the State Secretariat.
"One can overcome the hardship caused by the rise in fuel prices... You can control this with electrical and gas-based vehicles," Dhavalikar went on to say, adding that several vehicles run on ethanol too.
Speaking to the media later, Dhavalikar said, the State government is implementing a pilot project which will make over 70 government buildings in the capital city of Panaji fully powered by solar energy.
The Power Minister said, on completion of this pilot project being implemented under the Smart City programme, the State government will go for solar energy in all big government buildings.
"We have decided to have a one-megawatt solar plant at the Goa Engineering College campus. The preliminary stage work is currently on," Dhavlaikar said, adding that if the Speaker gives his nod, then the Goa Legislative Assembly Complex will also be taken up for installation of solar energy systems.
