Govt. Launches First-of-its-Kind Public Electric Vehicle Charging Plaza

The Union Power Minister has launched the first-ever public electric vehicle charging plaza in the country at Chelmsford Club in New Delhi. Along with this, the Minister of Power, New and Renewable Energy has also inaugurated Retrofit of Air-conditioning to improve Air Quality for Safety and Efficiency (RAISE), which has been developed as a joint initiative of the Energy Efficiency Services Limited and USAID.

Highlights

The charging plaza launched by the Union Minister is a new avenue for making e-mobility convenient in India. It will encourage more people to shift to electric vehicles in the country. The initiative will go a long way to create robust e-mobility infrastructure in the country.

The Energy Efficiency Services of India Limited has been instrumental behind this as it is the main player in the country, promoting the development of electric vehicle in the country. It is undertaking steps to improve demand aggregation for procurement of EVs and identifying innovative business models for implementation of Public Charging Stations in the country. The first-ever such charging station has come up in collaboration with the New Delhi Municipal Corporation in New Delhi. The plaza will have the capacity of hosting 5 electric vehicle chargers of different specifications, once fully operational.

It is expected that the charging plaza will create a more robust ecosystem of EVs in the country by making the charging of such vehicles without any hassle.

The RAISE Program is aimed at alleviating the issue of bad air quality in workspaces across the nations and also making them healthier and greener. This project has also been developed by EESL and is part of the MAITREE Program of the US Agency for International Development. This is going to improve the indoor air quality, thermal comfort and energy efficiency in the office premises.

MAITREE Program

The Market Integration and Transformation Program for Energy Efficiency (MAITREE) is a part of the US-India bilateral partnership between the Ministry of Power, Government of India and USAID. The main objective of this program is to help adopt a cost-effective energy efficiency solution as a standard practice within buildings and specifically focuses on cooling.

US Agency for International Development

This is a US agency mainly tasked with administering foreign aid. It has a total budget of more than $27 billion and it is hailed as one of the largest financial aid programs of the world. It mainly provides funds for poverty reduction, disaster reduction, technical cooperation and socio-economic development.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020