India plans 6,000 MW wind power in next 10 years
Date: 03-Apr-02
Country: FRANCE
"The industry is facing some problems because the states have different policies and the government policy is not correctly followed by the states," M. Kannappan, India's minister of non-conventional energy resources, told Reuters on the sidelines of a wind power conference in Paris.
"To make it mandatory, we are planning to bring out a new electricity act to have uniform participation by all states. It will make investment a lot easier," he said, adding that the bill was being considered by an expert committee.
Investment in India, which opened up its power sector to foreign investors in the early 1990s, has been overshadowed by a dispute between its biggest foreign direct investor, collapsed U.S. power group Enron Corp, and a local state utility.
To attract 100 percent private investment in renewable energy, including wind power, the government is offering policy and fiscal incentives such as soft loans, concessional rates of customs duty, exemption from excise duty and sales tax, income tax benefits and accelerated depreciation, Kannappan said.
India is implementing one of the world's largest renewable energy programmes and has installed over 3,400 MW of capacity based on renewable energy, including wind, solar, biomass and small hydropower plants.
It plans to boost this clean energy production by 10,000 MW by 2012, mainly by tapping the wind, Kannappan said.
India is already the fifth largest wind power producer in the world, with over 1,500 MW of capacity, but it is looking to expand output by 6,000 MW, especially for remote villages where the costs of linking up to a grid would be too expensive.
"In India, the planning strategy has to be different from the industrialised world," Kannappan said.
Investment in existing wind farms has been limited to local investors, but Kannappan remained optimistic on his country's potential for foreign investors.
"We will not wait for you to come and invest, but we expect foreign investors to come in because there are good returns and it is good for them too," he said.