India@2047: Aviation, power, green mobility to drive the need to scale up India’s infra

New Delhi: Shifting demand in areas such as airport infrastructure, power, and green mobility will drive India's need to scale up its infrastructure, according to experts.

Speaking at Mint's India@2047 summit in the national capital on Friday, the panel, which comprised industry veterans, discussed the shifts in demand in their sectors due to changing consumer patterns.

Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO of Delhi International Airport Ltd, said the civil aviation sector will double in size by 2047 due to rapid growth in the number of flyers in India.

"Currently, India operates close to 780 aircraft, with orders for over 1,000 more. At the current growth rate, we expect the number of passengers, currently around 370 million—split between 185 million departures and 185 million arrivals—to double every 10 years with a 7% growth rate. By 2047, we could potentially see the sector double again in size,” said Jaipuriar.

“As more travel is promoted, there are increasingly more first-time travellers—about 15%—who are upgrading from railways to aviation. This shift is fueling a growing hunger for travel from the grassroots level,” Jaipuriar added.

He said the government investments, along with investments made by private operators, provided the government with revenue to build more airports. "Delhi Airport has played a role in helping develop airports across the country. Most private airports have contributed to this by relieving the government from investment burdens," said Jaipuriar.

"It’s the private operators who are actually investing and also providing revenue share back to the Airports Authority of India (AAI). This revenue can then be invested into smaller, less frequently used airports,” Jaipuriar added.

He also pointed out that non-metro airports are growing faster than metro airports due to capacity constraints in major cities like Mumbai. Cities such as Patna and Bhubaneswar have experienced significant growth in recent years.

"Current trends indicate that civil aviation growth is happening across the board, with non-metro airports outpacing metro airports. Many metro airports are capacity constrained due to lagging infrastructure development. Although we typically create a 10-year master plan, the dynamics shifted significantly after 2016, leading to unexpected growth," he said. 

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Yashraj Khaitan, CEO of Polaris Smart Metering, said infrastructure was growing complex by the day, adding that smart metering would propel a radical shift in the power sector.

He said smart meters are like the UPI of the power infrastructure. "…just like everything that UPI has enabled in finance. Smart meters would start enabling for power.” 

Khaitan added that linking power generation, transmission, and consumption through smart meters, a state such as Rajasthan can effectively create a virtual power plant without building new infrastructure. This digital approach could help increase renewable energy use from 20% to around 40-45%, he said.

Green mobility

Vivek Vikram Singh, managing director & group CEO, Sona Comstar, spoke on the central government's push for green mobility. "If you look at the two-wheeler industry where EVs have gained some traction, we’ve actually performed much better, and we’ve done it in a slightly different way. Yes, there is still a dependency on batteries, but there are other aspects to consider. Can we replicate that success across other segments of mobility? Yes, we can, and it will eventually happen," Singh said.

About investments in battery energy storage systems, he said, "So the best time to start building a battery ecosystem would have been 15 years ago. The second best time is now. There is no missing the bus when technology revolutions are concerned. What has happened is that we missed the first two waves,” said Singh.

Khaitan focused on the power infrastructure requirements for rapidly growing urban areas such as Gurgaon near the national capital. "If you look at Gurgaon as a city, even today, anywhere between 15% to 25% of daytime electricity is supplied by diesel generators due to frequent power cuts, especially during the summer. The city’s power infrastructure is not equipped to handle this demand," he said.

"Many areas in Gurgaon that were originally residential have been converted to commercial spaces, significantly increasing power consumption. The city was never prepared for this level of infrastructure upgrade, nor did it foresee the scale of upgrades needed to meet these requirements,” he added.