 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm honored to be invited to speak at the Institute of International and European Affairs, an institution that is arguably Ireland's intellectual hub. As the most representative of the institutions of Ireland interaction with Europe and the world, it has been in the forefront of catalyzing new thinking, new solutions and innovation policy options. The list of speakers who have addressed this August House is indeed formidable and I feel both humbled and privileged to be among the company of some of the most eminent of our generation. Indian Ireland are connected by tides of history. The struggle against imperialism brought their leaders together as the chairman himself has just said about Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru Gandhi with her by Patel and Sebastian Der Bosch had considerable friendships and had correspondence with the leaders and he mentioned Aman De Valera, third president of this great nation. We have a road in New Delhi in the Tanikapuri which is the where embassies are after this great man. You have also got Ramadhanath Tagore, the first Asian noble laureate whose statue is installed at Stephen's Green, the only non-Irish personage to be thus honored. It is the Irish constitution that we owe our directive principle of state policy. Our warm traditional ties have found their modern cause in growing economic relationship. Several leading Indian companies like Wokart, Reliance, Ranbaxi, TCS and Compton Gees have made investments in Ireland. Likewise several Irish companies are involved in the Indian economy. An Irish biometric technology group, Deon is part of the consortium which won the biometric identification contract for the prestigious national unique identification system. Over 1,000 Indian students are studying in your higher learning institutions and I had the honor yesterday of visiting Trinity and I saw the amount of cooperation that there has been between the institutions that Trinity has been able to develop in India and particularly in these renewable energy major work is undertaken by Trinity. We're also aware and appreciative of the efforts being made to accelerate applications of renewable energy in Ireland. Ireland is actively pursuing development of offshore wind, wave and tidal energy. We look forward to sharing policy experiences and developing specific research and cooperative activities in these areas with Ireland. We also look forward to strengthening India-EU cooperation in the renewable energy as next year you will be taking over as the presidency of the EU and we hope there'll be far more cooperation through that with the EU. The subject of my talk today is about the low carbon economy and growth in India. With per capita carbon dioxide emission at nearly one-fourth of the global average India ranks 122 in the global term list in terms of per capita emission. India GAG emission profile published as a result of five climate modeling studies revealed that our per capita greenhouse gas emissions even in 2031 would stay below four tons of CO2 equivalent which is lower than global per capita CO2 emissions of 2005. Quite evidently for us a low carbon economy provides the basis of economic framework that combines our development aspirations with our environmental needs. Our goal of inclusive growth implies an equitable access to sustainable development embodied recognition of the twin challenges of elevating poverty while minimizing the damage to the environment. At 2007 G7 summit at Holland Jidam our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh made a solemn commitment that India per capita carbon emission would never exceed the average per capita emission of the development industrial countries. In June 2008 India unveiled its national action plan on climate change proposing and directional shift in the developmental path. That promotes development objective while also yielding co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively. The eight national mission constitute the national action plan on climate change represents the core of our multi-pronged long-term and integrated national strategy for creating a prosperous but not wasteful society. In December 2009 at the Copenhagen conference all of the parties in the announce a voluntary domestic goal of reducing their mission in such intensity of GDP by 20 to 25 percent of the 2005 level by 2020. The National Planning Commission proposes low carbon sustainable growth to be a central element of our 12th five-year plan which has just started this April. What are our challenges on the path to low carbon growth? The task in hand is to provide energy to over half million human settlements spread over 3.2 million square kilometers of territory with a population of 1.2 billion souls. India supports around 17 percent of the world's population but its energy and electricity consumption is only around 5 percent of the world's consumption. It's per capita consumption of energy and electricity is less than one-third of the world's average. Around one-half of the India's rural population still lacks access to commercial electricity while over four-fourth of the rural populace uses traditional biomass for cooking. In order to sustain a growth rate of eight percent to the next two decades we would need to grow our primary energy supply by three to four times and electric supply by at least five to seven times of our current consumption. In a business as usual scenario the country might need to import over 90 percent of the requirement of oil and of 45 percent of requirement of coal. This demand an energy strategy that would provide a reliable and sustainable energy supply through a diverse and sustainable fuel mix. This is also why while striving to bridge our energy deficit we must necessarily increase the share of clean, sustainable, new and renewable energy sources. Renewable energy has already started making a visible impact in our country's energy mix. With a present installed capacity of over 25 gigawatts of grid-connected power India today stands among the top five countries of the world in terms of renewable energy capacity. Renewable power represents about 12 percent of total installed electricity generation capacity in India. This represents an almost 150 percent increase in the past five years alone. Investments in renewable grew by 52 percent last year and contributed nearly dollars 10.3 billion. The ENY country attractiveness index ranked India as the fourth most attractive investment destination. Our national action plan on climate change mandates an increase in the share of renewable power in the electricity mix to 15 percent by the year 2020. We have already developed an action plan that aims at accelerating the deployment of renewable energy with a deployment target of around 30 gigawatts of renewable power by 2017. The capstone of our national renewable effort is solar energy. In January 2010 we launched Jawaharlal Nehru solar mission. After the first prime minister and visionary Jawaharlal Nehru who dreamt of an Indian equipped with scientific temper and mystery in cutting edge technology. The national solar mission is one of the eight national missions under the national action plan on climate change. Mission aims to facilitate the installation of 20 gigawatts of grid connected and two gigawatts of grid solar power, 20 million square meters of solar thermal collector area and 20 million ruler households with solar home lighting by 2022. The mission aims to support research, development and innovation capacity building and robust manufacturing ecosystem to achieve grid parity in the shortest time frame. We are close to competing the first phase of the mission. We've already succeeded in setting up around one gigawatt solar power capacity. The reverse bidding process adopted under the mission has led to reduction in the price of solar electricity from 35 U.S. cents per kilowatt to less than 17 U.S. cents per kilowatt in the last one year alone. A striking feature of our solar mission so far has been its host of innovative and market friendly features. For instance the bundling of cost solar power with cheaper core base power resulted in lower average of power, cost of power. Similarly, the discovery of tariff by way of tariff discounting helped us to encourage efficiencies and reducing cost. The provision of risk guarantee fund has significantly enhanced the bankability of the projects. Despite the strong push for solar energy, wind energy continues to contribute significantly to our renewable energy mix. With over 17 gigawatts installed capacity, India competes globally in manufacturing and deployment and occupies the fifth position in the world. Our policy framework and wind energy generation is extremely investment friendly. An attractive feeding tariff, supportive regulatory regime, physical and promotional incentive provides a strong foundation for the growth of this sector. Biomass, which is carbon-neutral fuel source of energy, also holds considerable promise for India. Our surplus biomass material could potentially be used to generate about 20 gigawatts of power without bridging the power gap projects based on biomass would help generate rural employment. We are currently working towards a national bioenergy mission. This mission will help devise a policy and regulatory environment to provide a predictable incentive structure for rapid and large-scale capital investment in biomass energy application. We're also working on national biomass cook-stow initiative to explore a range of technologies, institutional framework and delivery model leveraging public-private partnership. While the significance of renewable energy in its grid-connected application is usually well appreciated, what is often overlooked is its capacity to usher in energy excess. Around 1.1 million Indian households are already using solar energy to meet their lighting energy needs. An almost similar number of households meet their cooking energy needs from biogas plants. In the state of Rajasthan, we are providing over 9,000 solar systems of 1 kilowatt capacity each to help reliable power to run computers, televisions and provide e-connectivity to otherwise far-flung and poor areas. In the state of Bihar, we're experimenting with generation of electricity and its local distribution through use of locally available rice husk. In numerous other villages, we are promoting solar charge being stationed as an opportunity to create micro-level enterprises. Our present efforts are focused on creating a framework for self-sustaining program based on a rural entrepreneurship model to be able to provide universal energy excess. Renewable energy-based solutions also find significant industrial application. Over 25 gigawatt power is currently generated by diesel. Over 1 million tons of furnace oil is used annually for meeting incremental process heat requirements in industry. We are promoting solar energy to save both of by acting as heat as well as power source. Industries facing power shortage, telecom towers using diesel, agriculture pumps set using diesel, large kitchens using LPG are promising candidates for this effort. We have nearly half a million mobile towers in our country and each mobile tower has either one generating set at the bottom or two generating sets. So you can imagine the amount of diesel we are using and therefore the amount of money that we are really dishing out for that diesel because diesel is highly subsidized in our nation. We have geared our policy and regulatory regime to measure up to the challenges of low carbon growth paradigm. The National Ecstasy Regulatory Framework makes it mandatory for a specific specified percentage of total electricity in this country to be generated through renewable power. Nationally tradable renewable energy credits have also been introduced in the form of renewable energy certificates. A rupees 50 that's about one dollar per ton says on coal is levied and the process proceeds used to fund projects on clean energy. A national energy efficiency mission aims the same about 23 million tons of oil equivalent to fossil fuel every year by 2014-2015 along with an avoid the electricity capacity addition of 9,000 megawatts. I must tell you here we have an oil lobby which you must have here also and not very easy to break that lobby. We wanted to add five percent ethanol into the oils. We had terrible difficulties of the things they created that we don't have enough molasses sugar molasses and then when they couldn't beat us on that then they said oh the industry that is using this molasses which is for paint and alcohol they are going to suffer and they got those lobbies to come and see that we don't do it then government of India's cabinet took a decision that it has to be done and if not done by the company the punishment was very severe and thus it took off otherwise believe me oil lobby all over the world is extremely strong and that makes quite a lot of difficulties for those who want to get into the renewable energy sector. A natural green Indian mission aims at expanding the forest and green cover by over 10 million hectares over the next decades dedicated freight trains corridors aim to facilitate a shift in freight traffic from road to rail while expanding public transport in urban areas aims to cut down transport related emissions. Now what are the roadblocks on low carbon expressway? Two investment and technology are the two biggest challenges that faces today. Broadest to me to indicate that India's investment requirement in renewable energy would be at least US dollar 50 million in the next five years alone. We expect the renewable energy program in India would benefit from proposed green climate fund under the Durban platform of enhanced action of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In addition to the proposed funding under multilateral regimes India also expects finances under the bilateral route. Further the private sector has also played a key role in India's effort to tap renewable energy and our policy regime has always encouraged foreign direct investment for renewable energy development and deployment. Here I must also add that the Secretary General of United Nations in his next the five years that have started last year took up on his that energy excess to all from eight billion dollars per year. Now United Nations is going to go to 48 billion dollars a year to see that within his five-year term energy excess to all the areas in the world would be met at a faster rate. India is also a part of that group that he has constituted. Technology is the key to a sustainable energy future. We have been pursuing coordinate technology development projects on various excerpts or renewable energy. However we strongly believe in the need for devising a mechanism for unrestricted flow of renewable energy technologies. We believe that there is a real need for creation of global technology mechanism that treats renewable energy technology as global commons. To begin with these technologies could be placed in the public domain and joint research and development projects could be taken up between institutions of developed and developing countries. Here with the UAE becoming the center of the IRENA UAE started a fund of 50 million dollars per year for developing this energy and in the last meeting that we had last year I suggested to them because they hadn't used this fund for three years so I suggested to them that why is it not that IRENA buys this technology and then gives this technology to both the developing countries and developed countries because number of developed countries also do not have this technology and therefore it could be a media of transferring this technology at the easiest rate to many of the poorer countries and that has been accepted and I hope that that fund will now start being used for this. The challenge for India is gigantic and exciting. We are determined to set history on a hopeful course away from poverty and despair and towards development and dignity. We have made considerable progress on our own but what we have miles to go as nations from around the world meet at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and Real in the coming week. We expect a global action that is compatible with the efforts being made at the national level. A sustainable feature depends on creating a society that is characterized by fairness, stability and imperative of inclusiveness. It was Mahatma Gandhi who had said, I quote, there is enough on earth for everyone's need but not everyone's greed. We hope that this message is not lost on our leaders in Rio. Thank you.