Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

As Minister of Petroleum and Energy, it is a great pleasure for me to be present here in New Delhi to open this interesting seminar. As major hydropower nations, India and Norway should both benefit from this event where top professionals will share experiences within the hydropower sector and in power management.

India is a large hydropower nation both with regards to present production and future potential. Contrary to Norway, considerable resources are still not developed. I have heard much praise of the expertise of India in this sector, and it is my hope that events like this will bring us closer together to mutual benefit.

Our countries are similar in many respects when it comes to hydropower; we have many projects with high heads and rocky areas which are well suited for underground plants.

We have tough topographical and climatic challenges to overcome. We also share the same challenge when it comes to long-distance transport of electricity from rural areas to the consumers in the cities.

Water is one of Norway’s major natural resources. A large number of waterfalls and natural lakes provide excellent opportunities for dam construction and hydro power development. Hydropower has for more than 100 years been very important for Norway. We are blessed by nature in terms of energy. Along with a considerable oil and gas production, Norway is the world's sixth largest hydropower producer, with an average annual production of about 120 Terawatt hours. The installed capacity is over 28 000 MW, in more than 600 plants spread around the whole country.

Although Norway has developed most of the available hydropower resources, there is still a high degree of activity in this sector. We have many projects undergoing upgrading and refurbishment, and there are some medium-sized projects being developed. I will especially like to point out that there is currently a “boom” in small hydropower development, consisting of projects below 10 MW. Our Directorate, NVE, has at present 250 applications undergoing licensing.

Domestic demand for electricity is almost exclusively met through hydropower. Emission-free hydropower has been very beneficial to our environment. Hydropower was the key factor in transforming Norway from one of the poorest countries of Europe about a century ago, to an industrialized and wealthy nation of today.

The concept of sharing the economic results has secured local communities substantial benefits directly from hydropower developments and indirectly from all the local industries which grew up around hydropower plants. Another important feature is the development of a highly skilled Norwegian industrial cluster related to hydropower development.

The Norwegian energy cluster offers all technical services required for developing the power sector. Their services comprise all aspects from conducting pre-feasibility studies, planning, construction, delivery of mechanical equipment and electricity management.

Our industry is now gaining expertise also when it comes to develop small hydropower projects in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way.

These companies are to a large extent complementary in the sense that they do not compete directly with each other. Each company has its own specialised field of work, although some of their expertise is overlapping. Based on a common technical background, they often co-operate very well on various projects around the world.

During my time as Minister responsible for this sector, I have learnt to appreciate their skills.

When Norway introduced the Energy act in 1990, we created a market for generation and trade in the electricity sector. This led to an increased awareness about cost-effectiveness both with regards to operating existing plants as well as to developing new projects.

An important part of the reform was to secure open access to the grid for all consumers. Today, consumers can change electricity supplier if they want to do so. Later today, you will hear more about our experiences with the Power Exchange, which I think could be of interest to India, both on a national and a regional level. Our experience from Northern-Europe has shown us that a system where you can use hydropower as peak power and thermal power as base-load has proven both to be efficient and economically beneficial for hydropower producers.

The success of the Norwegian deregulation and the Nordic power market has resulted in an extensive demand for our competence and experiences. NVE has been involved in activities related to deregulation in 15 – 20 countries around the world and they have successfully been able to match the areas of public administration and more commercial based activities in this work. Also our “Power Exchange”, NordPool, is very active abroad. Later today you will hear more from both NVE and NordPool.

Several Norwegian companies have been working in India, and I hope this cooperation will continue.

I have been informed that SN Power Invest is very pleased with their projects in India, which is the largest Norwegian investment in India, regardless of sector. SN Power will have a presentation later today about their experiences.

I am looking very much forward to visiting the projects Malana and Allain Duhangan on Friday, and to get an on-site understanding of the successful joint venture between SN Power and the Bhilwara group.

At this bilateral Power seminar, I would like to emphasise that globally we are facing two major challenges related to energy.

The first challenge is related to environmental impacts, in particular greenhouse gas emissions.

The second is to strengthen the world’s vulnerable energy supply in a sustainable way. An economy exclusively based on non-renewable fossil fuels has several obvious limitations in the long term perspective.

One of the solutions to these challenges is hydropower, which is widely regarded as a clean and environmentally acceptable energy source when carried out with due care concerning the environment. As a renewable energy source, hydropower in all sizes, from large to small, would be even more useful in the future compared to thermal power.

It is my sincere hope that this occasion could strengthen the Indo-Norwegian co-operation in the field of power generation and transmission to the benefit of the environment and economic development.

With these concluding remarks, I wish you interesting discussions during the day.

Thank you for your attention!