New Delhi, February 3 In line with the India’s commitment to have a renewable energy (RE) capacity of 500 gigawatt (GW) by 2030, the government has hiked the budget expenditure of state-run Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) and Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) collectively by a whopping 143 per cent. Both the public sector undertakings (PSUs) are under the administrative control of the Ministry of New and Renewable Ministry (MNRE). For the upcoming financial year, beginning April 2022, the government has proposed a total expenditure of ₹28,570.99 crore by IREDA and SECI, against a Budget expenditure of ₹11,778 crore in FY22. The revised expenditure by both the agencies in the current fiscal stands at ₹21,474.19 crore. Compared to revised expenditure of FY22, the budgeted expenditure in FY23 is higher by 33 per cent. In the Budget for FY23, the government has raised the Budget expenditure by IREDA by a whopping 150 per cent to ₹27,572.34 crore compared to the budget expenditure in FY22 at ₹11,017.82 crore. Compared to the revised expenditure of ₹19,639.74 crore by IREDA in FY22, the budget expenditure in FY23 by the company is higher by 40 per cent. In the case of SECI, the budget expenditure in FY23 is higher by 31 per cent at ₹998.65 crore. However, compared with the revised expenditure of ₹1,834.45 crore in FY22, SECI’s budget expenditure for next financial year is down by 46 per cent.
World’s largest RE prog
India is home to one of the world’s largest RE programmes, with a target of 175 gigawatts (GW) of installed RE capacity by 2022. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to increase the country’s RE capacity to constitute 500 GW of India’s total installed capacity by 2030. The government also wants to increase the contribution of RE sources in the country’s power generation to more than 50 per cent by the end of this decade, as the world’s second largest power consumer pledged to become carbon neutral by 2070. This comes after the MNRE, last month, announced an equity infusion of ₹1,500 crore and ₹1,000 crore in IREDA and SECI, respectively. The move will help improve their capital-to-risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR) and help them in lending and borrowing operations. The equity infusion in the two companies will collectively help them in financing RE capacity of up to 73-75 GW. As per RBI norms, an agency can extend loans on 20 per cent of its net worth. As of September 2021, solar energy had the highest share of ₹9,442.16 crore worth of loans, or roughly 32.7 per cent, of the total loans disbursed by IREDA. It was followed by short term loans of ₹7,696.72 crore (26.7 per cent), wind energy ₹6,017.46 (20.9 per cent), small hydro projects ₹2,900.82 crore (10.1 per cent), biomass & cogen ₹1,516.87 crore (5.3 per cent) and others ₹1,282.42 crore (4.4 per cent). As of December 2021, SECI has successfully awarded more than 50 GW of renewable capacity across the country, out of which 32.69 GW is solar power, 12.73 GW is wind power and 5.35 GW is hybrid power. Besides, it has operational capex projects of 21 MW capacity under its ownership and the company is looking to expand its portfolio in renewable energy.