Plan to use surplus land of railways to generate 20 GW of renewable energy: Goyal

New Delhi: Indian Railways plans to use its surplus land to generate 20 GW of renewable energy from ‘Made in India’ solar or wind equipment to power its network, Commerce, Industry and Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday.

He said Indian Railways will be a 100 per cent electricity-driven rail network in coming years which would make it the largest such network in the world.

“We plan to use a lot of our surplus land and land along the tracks to generate 20 GW (gigawatts)…’Made in India’ solar or wind equipment being used to give us 20 GW production capacity of renewable energy and enough KW (kilowatt) hours to power our entire railway,” Goyal said.

He was addressing CEEW India’s programme on ‘Powering Livelihoods: Transforming India’s Rural Economy with Clean Energy Solutions’.

The railways may need to either expand battery storage or other forms of storage for this, he said.