India Assures RE Developers of Pro-Business Policies at COP 25

The government of India has assured RE developers that they will be provided with a more business-friendly environment in India

The government of India has assured renewable energy (RE) developers that they will be provided with a more business-friendly environment in India with an introduction and better implementation of policies like the payment security mechanism to lower risk on investment.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing COP 25 conference in Madrid, New and Renewable Energy Secretary Anand Kumar said that the “government is committed to managing curtailments to enhance the ease of doing business for developers in the renewable energy sector.”

A payment security mechanism to de-risk investments in renewable has also been put in place, and on the demand side, the ministry is working with farmers and commercial and industrial (C and I) consumers to embed them into the renewables value chain as direct stakeholders, he was quoted as saying in a release by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).

At the summit, the official also informed about India‘s 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2022 and said 83 GW has already been installed, and an additional 70 GW capacity is under fruition. The MNRE aims to bid out the balance capacities for solar and wind by June 2020, giving developers 30 months to complete deployment, Kumar said.

“Kumar (also) underlined the need for catalysing private investment and expand India’s clean energy market through innovative risk mitigation and aggregation instruments. He stated that the additional investments in renewable up to the year 2022 would be about USD 80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around USD 300 billion would be required up to 2030,” the ministry statement added.

The official also briefed about the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evem Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM- KUSUM) Scheme for farmers to install solar pumps and grid-connected renewable power plants, targeting 26 GW capacity and 1.7 million farmers by 2022.

More recently, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar stressed on his point that more and more countries should join the International Solar Alliance (ISA) to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to meet their growing energy requirements, Speaking at a ministerial plenary on the sidelines of the COP 25 under the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Madrid, Javadekar said there was a need to speed up this alliance to trap solar energy in a big way.