India has so far attempted to decelerate the climate change through promotion of Renewable energy, driving the cleaner forms of investments and working towards a smooth Energy transition and been termed a leader in this genre.
While the country may continue to do all the good work, we need to analyze if there is some due space given to the cleaner energy forms in the Indian Budget, that is supreme guiding document for the last year’s efforts made and the forthcoming aspirations of the Nation.
India, along with the world has understood how real and pressing is the need today to be inclined towards the cleaner forms of Energy as our current dependence continue to be on conventional petrochemical fuels and energy sources which are imported at large, with significant fiscal deficit, cannot be sustained in the longer run, cause pollution to increase the global warming and curse people’s health.
Budget’s focus on Solar Energy and other Renewables:
A stringent policy is any day needed for an inclusive and just energy evolution in place. India, being a diverse country with diversified vulnerabilities will need more focus on enabling deeper yet proportional energy access.
This has been looked at large through certain following provisions of the budget.
India’s Finance Minister said, in the Parliament: “In order to support domestic manufacturing of solar panels for meeting the target of 280 GW of installed solar capacity by 2030, Rs 19,500 crore for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for high efficiency modules with priority to fully integrated units will be made in 2022-23”.
With China being one of the greatest producers of Solar Photo Voltaic (PVs) in the world, the onus lies on Indian leadership to explore the similar options in India as we have a comparative labor potential to yield better solar power equipment and batteries.
As per the Industry expert: “The scheme on solar module manufacturing is likely to bring another 40 GW of solar manufacturing because in the previous round, more than 40GW of bids remained unfulfilled as top 3 players only accounted for the entire PLI allocation”.
“It remains to be seen whether the cap on volume under PLI will be modified or it will go to the next set of players. If caps are removed, the PLI scheme can allow companies to reach global scale or be among the top 5 producers.”
Upon their production in the country, Indian companies can find it cheap and appealing to source renewable energy.
The Budget has also included Distributed Renewable Energy projects to be set up in border villages under the banner of Vibrant Village Programme. Decentralized renewable energy options have acted as a solution to electrify the remote places at easy rates across Africa, a similar approach can create a way in India as well.
For boosting the domestic manufacturing of electronic goods and their parts in the country, be it electricity smart meters or phone components, through import duty exemptions.
“Duty concessions being given to promote electronics manufacturing, wearables and hearables devices included. Duty concessions to parts of mobile phones including camera module”, as per the speech.
A different approach to just prospering fossils has been undertaken, with guidelines to include 5-7 per cent of biomass pellets for co-firing in the coal-based thermal power plants nationwide. This will promote lesser emissions and usage of coal.
There will be four pilot projects for coal-gasification and implementation of coal-to-chemical technology.
Besides these direct measures, energy efficiency and conservation will be adopted and promoted in large commercial buildings, like the operation of grid scaled battery systems in energy-intensive infrastructure like Datacenters.
For Electric Vehicles (EVs), the Centre has brought afore the battery swapping policy with inter-operability standards that allows setting up of charging infrastructure at various points in Urban cities, with private companies.
Seeking to develop innovative sustainable business models for providing ‘Energy as a Service’, this announcement will help increase the use of EVs in public transportation and promote green mobility.
This has been in line with the Prime Minister’s ambitious target at COP26 for increasing the country’s installed renewable energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030 and attaining the Net-zero by 2070.
This means an additional 42 GW on an average per year will be needed to produce for the next eight years. And this can only happen with greater funding specific to cleaner energy forms.
Finance Minister has emphasized: “As a part of the government’s overall market borrowings in 2022-23, sovereign Green Bonds will be issued for mobilizing resources for green infrastructure. The proceeds will be deployed in public sector projects, which help in reducing the carbon intensity of the economy.”
Thematic funds have been introduced for India’s Sunrise sectors like Renewable Energy, Fintech, pharmaceuticals, Energy efficiency etc.
Being a source for greener projects, Green bonds provide a way to invest in the evergreen Renewable energy dominion that the country strives to establish.
What more needed consideration in the Budget?
A budget every year brings for the policies which seem to be disbursing solutions yet we stay disturbed as a country, problem barely lies in the formulation of policies but in their implementation.
How many of these policies yield their goals, remains a question.
We talk about battery swapping, based on an access to electricity from the grid which only makes sense if the grid is powered by Renewable energy. But that needs more flexible electricity infrastructure which seems difficult at this point in the country.
Also, other renewable energy modes like Wind energy, small hydro, off-shore wind etc., apart from Solar and Electric Vehicles, lack emphasis. The country has different geographies which can witness boom in different energy forms, if implemented accordingly.
The country cannot dare to expect absolute economic growth without the right kind of emphasis on its energy.