As part of India's effort to promote greater engagement with neighbours, stateowned NTPC Ltd is in talks with the Maldives for setting up renewable energy projects in Male, the island nation's capital. " We are planning to set up joint ventures in Male and other countries for renewable energy," chairman and managing director Arup Roy Choudhury said. "The talks are in the initial stages. The focus is on reduction of the carbon footprint. We plan to have around 70% of our generation from renewable sources by 2032." As the largest power producer in the country, NTPC is the biggest consumer of coal in India but will need to balance the country's hunger for the fuel with environmental concerns. Washington-based Center for Global Development, a policy and research organization, identified NTPC in 2008 as the third largest polluter among the world's power producers.
"We are in talks for setting up projects in Male, but we have to first conduct studies to understand the generation potential there," another NTPC executive aware of the discussions said on condition of anonymity. "The talks are at a very preliminary stage." The Maldives comprises 1,192 coral islands with a population of only 320,000 to the south-west of India. India sees the island nation as an important ally to counter threats to its security in that part of the Indian Ocean. The Indian government is concerned about China's influence in the Indian Ocean and Chinese investments in ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, besides energy and infrastructure projects in Myanmar. "The national companies benefit from their status in obtaining international access and often need to also play their role in the geopolitical developments," said Gokul Chaudhri, a partner at audit and consulting firm BMR Advisors. "This is certainly true of the national companies in natural resources and also utilities and heavy industry. They require adept balancing of corporate and national interests.
NTPC needs to build footprint in wider interest in the region and also determine the strategy to gain clear advantages from its unique positioning as a national utility." NTPC, which has a power generation capacity of 33,194MW, plans to increase its installed capacity to 75,000MW by 2017. It plans to generate 35,840MW through non-fossil fuel sources by 2032 when it plans to have a generation capacity 1,28,000MW. NTPC plans to set up a 1,000MW renewable power generation capacity by 2017 through solar, wind, geo-thermal and small hydropower plants. However, NTPC's overseas plans are yet to bear fruit. The utility's first overseas project, a 500MW plant to be built in Sri Lanka, has been delayed by at least four years due to financial disagreements with its foreign partner and Tamil separatist strife in the island nation, Mint reported on 22 April. NTPC has also been unsuccessful in securing gas supplies from Nigeria and Yemen. Its plans to secure coal mines in Africa have not yielded results either.