Modi govt's energy policy to now focus on renewable supply

The government has decided to come up with a new national energy policy, which bears Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stamp as it focuses on renewable energy and making India energy independent.

Updated on: May 3, 2015, 23:34:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has decided to come up with a new national energy policy, which bears Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stamp as it focuses on renewable energy and making India energy independent.

It will replace the Integrated Energy Policy of the UPA government adopted in 2006.

The new government believes that the UPA’s policy had failed to recognise the importance of renewable, decentralised power and upcoming energy sources like Shale gas for meeting the country’s energy needs.

The UPA’s policy document also failed to comprehensively address the issue of country’s dependence on imported fuel to meet its energy demand, official sources said.

The government estimates that the share of imported coal for generating power will increase to 30% by 2030 and that of fossil fuels will rise to 80%. “This could be a major bottleneck for sustaining economic growth. So, the focus of the new government is finding ways to encourage bio-fuels and have alternate energy sources to fossil fuels,” a senior government functionary said.

Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said that the new policy will be framed in consultation with the ministries of power, coal and could be expected in the next few months.

The man behind the UPA’s energy policy, Kirit Parikh, agreed to some extent with the new government that a lot has changed in the energy sector and said there was nothing wrong on modifying his policy.

“The concern for environment is much more than it was in 2006 and there was not much talk about the Shale gas. But, I hope that government studies the positive impact of the existing policy while framing the new one,” Parikh told HT.

The new policy will address the issue of regulatory framework for decentralised power that could be provided to 330 million Indian homes that are not connected to electricity grid as of now.

“The burning issue of 80% of rural homes using polluting biomass for cooking will also be discussed,” the functionary said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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