Indian ashrams are being encouraged to install solar arrays to promote the virtues of green energy
India is enlisting the help of its spiritual leaders to help meet its ambitious government target of installing 40,000MW of rooftop solar capacity by 2022.
India's religious and interfaith gurus will be encouraged to kit out their ashrams - spiritual hermitages or monasteries in Indian religions - with rooftop solar arrays in a bid to boost the popularity of solar energy among Indians and international visitors to the country, India's renewable energy secretary Upendra Tripathi said last week.
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"Spiritual and interfaith gurus have a large number of domestic and overseas followers who visit their ashrams or meditation centres in big numbers," Tripathi, told the Times of India. "So, we feel the gurus are ideally placed to showcase and demonstrate the values and virtues of solar energy to a global audience."
Meanwhile, the gurus are also set to become "spiritual partners" of the International Solar Alliance, a group of more than 100 tropical countries which was launched at the Paris climate summit in December.
An ashram of the Radha Soami Dera sect in Amritsar has already installed one of the world's largest rooftop solar arrays. The system, which is spread across 80 acres of rooftop, has a generating capacity of 19MW.
The Indian government is now drawing up a list of more than 100 large ashrams across the country to approach with a view to encouraging them to sign up to its spiritual solar mission.
Under the new scheme, participating ashrams will receive a "commitment certificate" to recognise their contribution to clean energy.
Earlier this month 3,500 Christian churches in the UK announced plans to switch to clean energy. The numbers include the 16 Catholic dioceses, with a total of 1,922 parishes, some of which made the decision to switch to clean energy following the release last year of the Pope's 920-page encyclical for the environment, Laudato Si.
Meanwhile, Morocco, which is set to host the upcoming COP22 climate summit, recently announced plans to install solar arrays on 600 mosques.
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