Promoting Renewable Energy in India for Sustainable Agriculture: Issues and Challenges

Agriculture and its allied sectors constitute as the largest livelihood provider to and also contribute to 18 per cent of GD P. India accounts for 17% of the world population but has only 4% share in energy consumption and within this very less share of renewable energy usage. In spite of green revolution, desertification, land degradation in the form of depletion of soil fertility, reduction in groundwater table and wider gap in demand and power supply. To address the problems, Government of India has formulated many policies and programmes at Union level and State level and also set up various institutes like The Solar Energy Centre, A Centre for Wind Energy Technology and Solar Energy Corporation of India. An Attempt has been made in this paper to assess the implementation of various initiatives of Government of India to address the complex problem of degradation of environment and promotion of renewable energy resources. This Paper is written by using secondary sources. The finding clearly reflects that Innovations for use of renewable energy must be promoted through community based financial organizations, co-operative societies and in order have to make access to these programmes to farmers.