India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman presented an Economic Survey 2023 -24 in the parliament recently. The survey was drafted by Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran and his team. The survey highlighted the initiatives taken by India to control climate change and ensure energy security.
The survey also mentioned the ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’ (OSOWOG) project. The project was initiated by India and the UK to interconnect renewable energy through borders on a large scale.
Countries aim is to establish different regional grids through a common grid which will be used to transfer renewable energy, especially solar energy.
The vision of the OSOWOG project is a mantra that “the sun never sets”. The idea of this mantra is to establish solar and other renewable energy sources in the various countries of the world where the sun is shining at any moment and further spread power to regions where it is needed.
Project OSOWOG will be implemented in three phases. The first phase will begin with the Indian grid connecting to the Middle East, South Asia, and South-East Asia grids to create a common grid.
The second phase includes the extension of the first phase to the renewable resources in Africa and the last phase aims to establish true global interconnection aiming for 2,600 GW of interconnection by 2050, according to the survey.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the slogan ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’ while addressing the country’s 77th Independence Day last year. PM Modi first shared the idea of the initiative OSOWOG at the First Assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in October 2018.
In May 2021, India and the UK decided to join the Green Grids initiative and OSOWOG initiative which together got launched as GGI-OSOWOG at the COP26 summit hosted by the UK in November 2021.
The Green Grid initiative along with the One Sun, One World, One Grid project was together launched by PM Narendra Modi and then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, during an event of the Accelerating Innovation and Clean Technology Deployment at the World Leaders Summit held on November 2, 2021, during COP26.
India has an ambitious target of encouraging renewable energy in the country and to complete its target of 500 GW of no carbon emission-based power generation capacity by 2030.
