Solar powered cell phone towers planned in India to reduce carbon emissions

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in India plans to make all cell phone towers powered using solar energy. India has 250,000 cell phone towers, each of which use 3-5 kilowatts of power depending on the number of operators using them. Together these towers use more than 2 billion litres of diesel every year for power generation. Apart from this, fuel is also spent for cooling the equipment in nearby hubs. If all these cell phone towers use solar energy then it could save a great amount of fossil fuels as well as reduce carbon emissions. This step could reduce carbon emissions by about 5 million tones as well as save more than 2 billion litres of diesel, which is a very substantial amount.

Considering the estimates which predict that India will have a billion cell phone subscribers by 2015, it is extremely essential that this policy to energize cell phone towers using solar energy is implemented as soon as possible to reduce strain on already scarce resources.
[cleantechnica]