NewDelhi,June 5. The Navy, as a self-driven and environmentally responsible force, has always been committed towards environment protection and green initiatives. As guardian of the seas, Navy employs a number of ships, submarines and aircrafts that have high energy intensity. With diminishing fossil energy resources there is an emerging need to ensure increased energy efficiency in every operation and process the Navy undertakes. Towards the same, the Navy has adopted a comprehensive ‘Indian Navy Environment Conservation Roadmap (INECR)’ for synergising the aim of ‘Blue Water Operations with a Green Footprint’
The Navy’s concerted efforts of formulation and implementation of numerous policies aimed towards energy efficiency and environmental protection have yielded good results which are evident in all Naval establishments. Some of the noteworthy initiatives towards ‘Clean and Green Navy’, with all social distancing/ COVID 19 protocols in-force, is elaborated in succeeding paragraphs.
Indian Navy commissioned one of its largest solar plant with a capacity of 3MW at Indian Naval Academy (INA), Ezhimala in July 2020. Another 2MW solar power plant was installed at Naval Station Karanja, Mumbai in July 2020. With this, the overall installed solar plant capacity at Naval Stations is 11 MW. These plants are grid connected utilising the state of art single axis sun tracking technology with computerised monitoring & control. The installation of SPVs are in line with Navy’s objective of fulfilling Govt of India’s ‘Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM)’ mission.
