Mr Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy said that the Union Government has equal focus on various forms of renewable power and does not discriminate between solar, wind or biogas power in terms of providing support to these renewable sources. Mr Goyal said that the Government reinstated accelerated depreciation to boost wind power sector in the first budget of the new Government so that people can expand and take benefits of the same. He was speaking after launching Indian Wind Resource Atlas at 100 metre level in September.

Mr Piyush Goyal stated that the Atlas will help policy makers at Centre and State Governments to deal with issues related to tariff fixation, transmission and grade frequency and providing better infrastructure for the investors. He said that he is personally very delighted that the ministry has provided such crucial information in public domain at free of cost. He assured that the Ministries of Coal, Power and New and Renewable Energy will keep on providing more and more data in public domain and thus work on bringing transparency in the system. Mr Saurabh Patel, Gujarat Energy Minister, Mr Rajendra Shukla, Madhya Pradesh Energy Minister, Mr Pushpendra Singh, Rajasthan Energy Minister, Mr D.K. Shivkumar, Karnataka Energy Minister, senior officials from central agencies, state Government and high level representatives of the wind industry were also present at the occasion.

The new Indian Wind Atlas is an important online GIS (Geographic Information System) tool for identification of the regional and local wind energy potential in India. It contains average annual values of Wind Speed (m/s), Wind Power Density and Capacity Utilization Factor (CUF) calculated for an average 2 MW turbine at 100 m.