Nov 15 2010
Saint-Gobain Solar, a subsidiary company of Saint-Gobain, a glass manufacturing company, has announced its intentions to enter the Indian solar market with its products.
The company, which has a glass manufacturing facility at Chennai, India, has shown interest to set up a solar thermal power production facility. The Indian government under its National Solar Mission is aiming to reach 20,000 MW solar power generation capabilities and as a first step is looking forward to achieve the 1,000 MW set up capacity by the year 2013. The heavily subsidized solar energy policy announced by the government has received a good amount of criticism especially from the wind energy sector because it creates job opportunities at some part of the world and not in India.
Fabrice Didier, Saint-Gobain Solar’s Chief Executive Officer and advisor to the French Government, said that India, as a country can become a most favored place for manufacturing solar equipments, such as ceramics, mirrors, solar PV modules and a variety of other solar power related products. He added that it can become a reality only when the government clears its policies related to solar energy.
B. Santhanam, Saint-Gobain India’s Managing Director, said that the government has only cleared the first phase of the solar activity offering incentives for the installations and feed in tariffs and did not spell out the details on the second phase. Santhanam further said that the government incentives should be based on the production capability instead of on the capital. He explained that the subsidy based on capital investment runs the risk of overstated investments and such risks are not there in incentives offered on the basis of the total output. He concluded saying that installing a solar manufacturing unit will not become viable unless it manufactures 1000 MW value of products and wanted to have a minimum of 60% market for the products in India.
Source: https://www.saint-gobain.com/en