Surat: Surat has become the only city in the country to produce 32 per cent of energy for self-consumption through renewable sources. This will go up to 35 per cent by 2020. Thanks to wind and solar power generation on its own, Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) hopes to become self-sufficient in energy by 2022.Ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE), Government of India, while giving the best solar city award to Surat in 2018, stated that as far as renewable energy is concerned, no other city in the country can match Surat as it has set up its own wind power plants that produce 30MW electricity.At present, SMC against its annual requirement of 245 Giga watts per hour (GWH), produces 86.5GWH of renewable energy, which is 32 per cent of its requirement and saves Rs89 crore on its annual energy bill of Rs200 crore.The renewable energy generation has seen a phenomenal reduction in carbon monoxide emission to 74,424 metric tonne per annum and that it is further projected to reduce at 80,136 metric tonne per annum in 2018-19. This will help a great deal in combating the effects of climate change.Municipal commissioner M Thennarasan said, “No other city in the country till recently had any wind power plants of its own. Only, recently Ahmedabad has gone for a 6MW wind power plant. As Surat has been working on renewable energy since 2003 and started setting up small bio-gas power plants, it has a lead over others.” Surat would be second city after Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala to set up 100KW floating solar panels at Gopi Talav this year along with 200KW rooftops above BRTS bus stops. Another 2.1MW of wind power is planned, which will take the total to 34.5MW of wind power plants, together generating 86.6GWH units per annum of green energy.Similarly, having installed 6MW of solar power plants generating 8GWH units per annum, another 1MW solar power plant will take the total to 7MW of solar plants which will generate 9.2 GWH units per annum.Additional city engineer, KH Khatwani told TOI, “Renewable energy generation will help the city tackle the effects of climate change.”

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