New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday placed energy self-reliance at the heart of his Independence Day address, unveiling new initiatives and reiterating existing commitments spanning oil and gas exploration, nuclear power, clean energy, and critical minerals to insulate India from global market volatility and trade shocks such as the ongoing tariff war triggered by US President Donald Trump.
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Speaking from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Modi said India could not afford to remain dependent on foreign suppliers for its fuel needs. “We all know that we are dependent on many countries for energy, whether it is petrol, diesel, gas, we have to spend lakhs of crores of rupees to get it. It is very important for us to make the country self-reliant from this crisis, to make it self-reliant in energy,” he said.
Highlighting progress in the past decade, the PM said solar energy capacity had grown 30-fold in 11 years, while investments worth thousands of crores were being made under Mission Green Hydrogen. New dams were being built to expand hydropower, and 10 nuclear reactors were under rapid commissioning to boost atomic energy output.
“By 2047, when the country completes 100 years of independence, we are moving forward with the resolve to increase the nuclear energy capacity by more than 10 times,” Modi said. He added that nuclear energy had been opened up to private sector participation as part of major reforms.
The PM also noted that India had achieved its target of providing 50 percent of its energy from clean sources five years ahead of schedule. “The target that we had set for 2030… we achieved it in 2025, we achieved it 5 years ago,” he said, crediting the “capability and determination” of Indians.
Modi announced the launch of the National Deep Water Exploration Mission to identify oil and gas reserves beneath the sea. “Taking forward our Samudra Manthan, we want to work in a mission mode towards finding the oil reserves, gas reserves under the sea,” he said.
He also stressed the need for self-reliance in critical minerals, which are vital for sectors ranging from energy and defence to high-tech manufacturing. “We have launched the National Critical Mission, exploration campaigns are underway in more than 1,200 locations and we are moving towards becoming self-reliant in critical minerals as well,” the PM said.
Modi said the coming era would be dominated by electric vehicles (EVs) and warned that without domestic battery manufacturing, India would remain dependent. “Be it solar panels or all the things required for electronic vehicles, they should be our own,” he said, underlining the push for domestic production across the clean mobility value chain.
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The PM added that the money spent on importing fossil fuels could have been invested in youth development, poverty alleviation, farm welfare, and rural transformation. “Now we are working towards becoming self-reliant,” he said.
