Washington: With his administration focusing on alternative sources of energy so as to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, US President Barack Obama wants to build Indo-US renewable energy partnership, which would end up in benefiting not only the two countries, but also the entire world.
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Special Envoy on Climate Change Shyam Saran met the US President at the White House at an official reception, Obama was quick to remind him the conversation he had in this regard with Singh in London early in April.
India and the US should seek to build renewable energy partnership, Obama told Saran during the brief exchange they had at the reception hosted by the President at White House for the participants of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate.
"In the very brief exchange that I had with him, he (Obama) referred to his meeting with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in London at the time of the G-20 Summit and said how encouraged and pleased he was with the exchange of views he had with the Prime Minister on that occasion, which included an exchange of views on issue of climate change and energy security," Saran told a group of Indian journalists.
"In that context he (Obama) said that we are very much looking forward to what had been agreed upon during that meeting that India and United States should seek to build up a renewable energy partnership," said Saran, who led the Indian delegation at the two-day conference held at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department.
The Obama Administration has already announced a $150 billion 10-year renewable energy initiative. In fact, it was a solar energy company - by the name of Namaste - in Denver Colorado, where Obama and Vice President Joe Biden together announced the administration's renewable energy initiative in February 2009.
According to Saran, Obama said his administration is "really looking forward" to developing a renewable energy partnership with India. "What are the ways we can collaborate together and that he attaches a great deal of importance to this initiative," Saran said.
He said the two countries are already doing quite a few things in this sector.
"It is not that as if we are starting things from scratch. As you know, we have an energy dialogue at the level of the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and the Energy Secretary in the US and within that for the last few years we have been working on things like clean coal, new technologies like hydrogen fuel economy.
"We have been talking about methane to market initiative. So there are things that we are already doing between the United States and India," Saran said.