State-owned telecom service provider BSNL and Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization or NEDO are in talks for devising ways to exploit solar energy in telecom networks for reducing carbon footprint.
Chief of NEDO in India Iwao Miyamoto met Director Consumer Mobility BSNL Anupam Shrivastava and pledged Japanese support for the effort, according to a BSNL press statement.
The BSNL and NEDO meeting comes ahead of a proposed visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Japan.
Ever since PM Modi assumed the office, he has been stressing on the need to reduce dependence on conventional energy through use of solar power.
NEDO is a semi-governmental Japan-based organisation that was set up in 1980 to promote the development and introduction of new energy technologies.
NEDO has formed alliance in India with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) to promote use of renewal energy.
The Indian government directed telecom companies to migrate 50 per cent of all rural mobile towers and 20 per cent in urban area to hybrid power to make it a mix of renewable energy and grid power by 2015.
By 2020, all telecom companies have been directed to adopt hybrid power for 75 per cent rural towers and 33 per cent of urban towers.
BSNL has about 70,000 mobile towers across country.
