No one is serious about renewable energy and most schemes and commitments made to promote it have remained only on paper, A.M. Gokhale, Secretary, Union Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, said here on Friday.

Inaugurating a two-day workshop for presspersons organized jointly by the Ministry and the Pune-based World Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE), Mr. Gokhale said the Union Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources has seen 17 secretaries in 16 years and nearly 11 ministers.

After all the hype on the wonders of jatropha as an alternative to diesel, not one hectare has been planted with the crop, he said.

The whole exercise of finding alternatives to diesel and other fossil fuels should be focused on finding the appropriate alternative. Instead, what is happening is that policy and funding are promoting choices that are nearly as expensive as conventional power.

Mr. Gokhale said there is a whole domain for captive generation to be tapped and renewable energy is best operated at decentralized levels, custom-designed to suit the small community of users and industrial estates and other categories of users.

In the next two to three decades, the captive power generation demand is estimated to be 30,000 MW, but as of now 50 percent of this demand is being met with diesel. There is apparently no hurry among the policy-makers to hasten the search for an alternative or draw up initiatives to assiduously promote alternative energy, he said.

The workshop is a much needed initiative to focus greater media attention on this sector in an informed, educated manner, because a sensitized media will help bring the issue centre stage, he added.

Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission Chairman, K.P. Pandey was no less critical of the way renewable energy is being promoted. The commission has now been made responsible for promoting renewable energy too, among its many other functions, he said.

All the incentives for investing in the sector and getting people to use renewable energy "disincentives" since neither the pricing nor the options are conductive to gainful business for prospective investors. The talk of bringing in a merit order and bidding system would be the best way to kill renewable energy, he said.

Series of workshops

WISE, an NGO and Trust established to promote the cause of sustainable energy development and conservation, will conduct a series of national workshops for the media. The current one is the second in the series after the one recently held in Pune. The objective of the programme is to expose the media to the right kind of information on renewable energy technologies and policy issues and create awareness about renewable energy.

WISE is headed by G.M. Pillai, who as Director General of Maharashtra Energy Development Agency earlier, pioneered many path-breaking activities in the area of green power development.