The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval for a five-fold increase in India’s solar power capacity target under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission to 100 GW by 2022.
The target, which has been shared previously by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal, will be met through 40 GW of rooftop solar projects and 60 GW of large- and medium-scale grid-connected projects.
While the target will require ₹600,000 crore of investment, the government will provide ₹15,050 crore as capital subsidy which would be used for rooftop solar projects and viability gap funding based projects.
“The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy intends to achieve 100GW with targets under three schemes of 19,200 MW,” an official statement said.
According to Wednesday’s approval, projects with investment of about ₹90,000 crore would be developed using bundling mechanism with thermal power.
“The government may also approach bilateral and international donors and also Green Climate Fund for achieving this target,” the statement added.
Further to achieve the target, the Prime Minister’s Office has also been pushing various ministries to incorporate changes in land use regulation and tenancy laws to facilitate aggregation and leasing of land by farmers/developers for solar power projects, the statement said.
Land identification The Prime Minister Office has also pushed for identification of large chunks of land for solar projects, large government complexes for solar rooftop projects, development of a Green Energy Corridor, provision of rooftop solar and 10 per cent renewable energy as mandatory reform under the Ministry of Urban Development and other such initiatives.
In a separate decision, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs also approved setting up of over 2,000 MW of grid connected solar power projects on a build, own and operate basis by solar power developers with VGF.
Total investments expected under this scheme is about ₹12,000 crore and the estimated funds to provide VGF is ₹2,100 crore to be disbursed till 2022.
The projects will be set up where power will be provided at a pre-determined tariff of ₹5.43 a unit for the first year with a five paise per unit increase over the next 20 years to take the tariff to ₹6.43 a unit, the statement said. For the last four years of the 25 year power purchase agreement, the tariff will remain fixed at ₹6.43 a unit. Thus, levellised tariff over the duration will be ₹5.79 a unit.