The government is taking steps to ensure that by 2015 at least 50 per cent of all rural towers and 20 per cent of urban towers are powered by hybrid power (renewable energy technologies + grid power).

“By 2020, it will increase to 75 per cent of rural towers and 33 per cent of urban towers," Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha today.

He said that operators should aim at carbon emission reduction targets for the mobile network at 5 per cent by 2012-13, 8 per cent by 2014-15, 12 per cent by 2016-17 and 17 per cent by 2018-19.

Trai's recommendations on green energy applications have been approved by the government and Department of Telecom (DoT) has issued directives to operators to adopt measures to green the sector, Deora said.

He said that there are a total of 7,28,663 mobile towers or base terminal stations (BTS) across the country, he added.

The operators have to ensure that the total power consumption of each BTS will not exceed 500W by the year 2020.

The directives call for a phased programme to be put in place by the operators to have their cell sites, particularly in the rural areas, powered by hybrid renewable sources including wind energy, solar energy, fuel cells or a combination thereof.

"The eventual goal under this phased programme is to ensure that around 50 per cent of all towers in the rural areas are powered by hybrid renewable sources by the year 2015," Deora said.

Deora said that to examine the technical feasibility and financial viability of solar wind based power system, a pilot project of solar and solar-wind hybrid system to power the mobile BTS have been carried out.