Centre to revamp energy mission to go beyond Paris treaty goals
The Centre is set to revamp a national energy efficiency mission started by the UPA to meet 40% of energy needs from renewable sources by 2030, as promised at the
Published on: Jul 13, 2017 04:44 PM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi
The Centre is set to revamp a national energy efficiency mission started by the UPA to meet 40% of energy needs from renewable sources by 2030, as promised at the Paris climate treaty.
The mission will promote production of energy efficient electric and hybrid vehicles and appliances through the government’s Make in India programme. (AFP FILE PHOTO)
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A new framework for revamping the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) is being drawn by the Niti Aayog, and it will have policy and regulatory interventions to go beyond the Paris deal goals without compromising on the dependence on high carbon-emitting coal.
At the recent G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had re-affirmed that India will go “above and beyond” the Paris climate deal, after United States President Donald Trump walked out of the 2015 Paris treaty.
The mission will promote production of energy efficient electric and hybrid vehicles and appliances through the government’s Make in India programme.
Renewable Goals
The draft policy unveiled by the Niti Aayog last month said 57-66% of India’s energy generation by 2040 would be from renewable sources, primarily wind, solar and big hydro.
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For this, the think tank had suggested a national mission on clean cooking, allowing people to opt for renewable energy instead of thermal, renewable energy management (REM) centres in each state, lower tariff for night-charging of electric vehicles and creating a national renewable grid.
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For this, the think tank had suggested a national mission on clean cooking, allowing people to opt for renewable energy instead of thermal, renewable energy management (REM) centres in each state, lower tariff for night-charging of electric vehicles and creating a national renewable grid.
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Key Tasks
Noting that the UPA’s NMEEE was not able to achieve its intended goals due to poor inter-sectoral linkages, the Aayog said the revamped mission will look into technology development and financial incentives in collaboration with the industry.
“A revamped National Mission would be launched which would have stronger linkage than before between the related sectors, and provide for a robust supervisory and review mechanism,” the Aayog said.
Officials said the mission will work on four broad components — right implementation strategy, regulatory mechanism, intervention/incentive tools and robust review mechanism.
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The Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which introduced star energy efficiency labelling for appliances, will be the nodal body for the mission.
Efficient Vehicles
The Aayog has found potential in the automobile sector, especially small cars and cargo vehicles, despite no tax holiday under the GST.
The government has imposed 12% tax on electric vehicles and 15% for hybrid vehicles as compared to 28% on fossil fuel vehicles. The automobile industry had termed the slab as disincentive for research and development in cleaner fuels.
The Aayog, however, suggested incentives, including depreciated taxation for manufacturing of green fuel vehicles in India as International Energy Agency has projected that by 2030 half of the new vehicles sold in the world would be electric and hybrid.
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“We should have most cost-effective technologies in the next five to seven years,” an official said.
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.
