National Offshore Wind Energy Policy 2015
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy released its first ever National Offshore Wind Energy Policy on 1st October 2015. India has already achieved significant success in the onshore wind power development with about 24 GW of wind energy capacity installed. The introduction of this policy, will replicate the success of onshore wind power development in the offshore wind power development.
Following are some of the key points of the policy:
- The offshore wind farms can be built in the following two maritime areas :
- Indian territorial waters, which generally extend up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from the baseline; and
- Exclusive Economic Zone, beyond the 12 nm limit and up to 200 nm, where India has right to construct structures such as wind farm installations.
- The MNRE will act as the “Nodal Ministry” for development of Offshore Wind Energy in India and will work for Development and Use of Maritime Space within the Exclusive Economic Zone.
- The National Institute of Wind Energy will act as the “Nodal Agency” for the development of offshore wind energy and will call for proposals under International Competitive Bidding (ICB).
- A preliminary assessment suggests potential to establish around 1 GW capacity wind farm each along the coastline of Rameshwaram and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.
- The table below gives the essential elements and objectives of the policy for development of offshore wind farm:
Thus with optimum exploitation of the offshore wind energy and this supportive National Offshore Wind Energy policy regime India will be able to meet its energy demands and will contribute to fulfill the missions of National Action Plan on Climate Change.
The Policy can be accessed here.