India eyes stronger energy ties with US: Piyush Goyal

New York: India anticipates a rise in energy trade with the United States in the coming years, with Washington's participation expected to play a key role in achieving the country’s energy security goals, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said.

"Clearly, the world recognises that (energy security) is one area where we all have to work together. India is a big player in the energy field... we are big importers of energy from across the world, including from the US," Goyal said.

Goyal delivered the keynote address at an event, 'Energy Security in a Shifting Global Landscape: Building Resilient Energy Markets Across Borders' hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York, US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), and India's leading decarbonisation solutions provider, ReNew, on Tuesday.

"We expect to increase our trade with the US on energy products in the years to come. And being close friends, natural partners, our energy security goals will have a very high element of US involvement, which will ensure price stability, diversified sources of energy for India and help us unlock limitless possibilities with the US on various fronts, energy and beyond,” he said.

Goyal is leading a delegation for meetings in New York with the US side to achieve an early conclusion of a bilateral trade agreement. The dignitaries attending the event included Member of Parliament Anurag Thakur, Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas Pankaj Jain, USISPF CEO and President Mukesh Agni, ReNew co-founder Vaishali Nigam Sinha and ReNew Chairman and CEO Sumant Sinha.

Goyal stressed that another area where India and the US can work together and plan to work together is nuclear power. "It's an area that we've been talking of for a long time. There were certain elements which needed to be set right. And I believe we are working in India to support private efforts on nuclear power," he said. 

Goyal added that India continues to invest in nuclear power and looks to double "our nuclear power in the coming years through government intervention, but we do hope to take it on a much bigger scale. It does have challenges related to price and energy costs, which will need to be addressed. We'll have to make it more competitive,” he said.

He underlined that collectively today, India is in a “sweet spot” to expand its clean energy and over the next five years, “we hope to grow from 250 gigawatt to 500 gigawatt.”

Goyal referred to the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which, he said, has far-reaching implications. "In fact, it could isolate the EU and hurt their economy because they would be like a small island and everybody else around them would be trading, whereas they would become price-competitive, they would actually cause inflation in their own economy,” Goyal said, adding that they would cause their infrastructure and their cost of living to become unviable.

(With PTI inputs)