In the interim budget, the finance minister had announced the PM Surya Ghar Yojana with a cost outlay of Rs 75,021 crore. The scheme aims to power 10 million households and create 17 lakh direct jobs across the solar value chain. It is also expected to add 30 GW of solar capacity and reduce 720 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the scheme has generated remarkable response with over 1.28 crore registrations and 14 lakh applications. The scheme will further provide free electricity up to 300 units to 1 crore households in the country.
She also announced new measures and policies around pumped storage, nuclear and thermal power plants. “A policy for promoting pumped storage projects will be brought out for electricity storage and facilitating smooth integration of the growing share of renewable energy with its variable and intermittent nature in the overall energy mix,” she said.
The FM pointed out that nuclear energy is expected to form a significant part of the energy mix for “Viksit Bharat”. For that agenda, the government will partner with the private sector for three things — setting up “Bharat Small Reactors”; research and development of “Bharat Small Modular Reactors”, and research and development of newer technologies for nuclear
The R&D funding announced in the interim budget — of Rs 13,208 crore — will be made available for this sector.
Sitharaman highlighted that the development of indigenous technology for Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) thermal power plants with much higher efficiency has been completed. “A joint venture between NTPC and BHEL will set up a full scale 800 MW commercial plant using AUSC technology. The government will provide the required fiscal support. Moving forward, development of indigenous capacity for the production of high-grade steel and other advanced metallurgy materials for these plants will result in strong spin-off benefits for the economy.”
For energy efficiency, the budget has proposed the creation of a road map for hard-to-abate sectors, the FM announced. The government will launch an investment-grade energy audit of traditional micro and small industries in 60 clusters, including brass and ceramic. These industries will be provided financial support to make the transition towards cleaner forms of energy and implementation of energy efficiency measures. The scheme will be replicated in another 100 clusters in the next phase.
The budget also took care of the energy sector from the exports angle. The finance minister said that minerals such as lithium, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements are critical for sectors like nuclear energy, renewable energy, space, defence, telecommunications and high-tech electronics. Therefore, it’s important to exempt custom duties on these items. “I propose to fully exempt customs duties on 25 critical minerals and reduce BCD on two of them. This will provide a major fillip to the processing and refining of such minerals and help secure their availability for these strategic and important sectors,” said the minister.
In a similar theme, she proposed to expand the list of exempted capital goods for use in the manufacture of solar cells and panels in the country. “Further, in view of sufficient domestic manufacturing capacity of solar glass and tinned copper interconnect, I propose not to extend the exemption of customs duties provided to them,” she added.
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