Home Solar Programme Will Normalise Solar Power: Shauna

Environment Minister Aminath Shauna claimed that the Home Solar programme would make solar panels so accessible to households that they would be bought and installed as air conditioners are.

Minister Shauna mentioned this at the ceremony held to hand over the Home Solar project to the Fenaka Corporation. Minister Shauna said that the project would create such a demand and interest that people would buy solar PVs; and that the same way every household installs an air conditioning unit and gets a washing machine, households would install solar PVs on their roofs.

Minister Shauna stated that the Maldives was very vulnerable to climate change. She mentioned that the Ministry’s goal was to increase the Maldives’ use of renewable energy by 20% within the Solih administration’s term. She claimed that with such a goal, the Maldives could become a “Net-Zero” country by 2030.

She said that even now, work was underway to install 11 megawatt solar PV systems in 26 islands, and the tendering process for 32.8 megawatt systems were also underway.