Coal is currently the source of 70 percent of India’s electricity.
The Government of India has recently reduced the green-energy open access transactions limit from 1 megawatt (MW) to 100 kilowatt.
Consumers who wanted ‘open access’ to clean energy sources, before the new rules were in place, had to have a minimum power consumption of 1 MW.
Open access refers to the non-discriminatory provision for the use of transmission lines for green-energy generation.
The new rules, notified June 22, 2022, aim at promoting the generation, purchase and consumption of green energy, including waste-to-energy plants, Raj Kumar Singh, the Union Minister for Power, had said in a press conference.
“In 2016, India signed the Paris Agreement and we promised of having 50 per cent of its total electricity be generated from clean energy sources by 2030. The changes to green energy open access were made to ensure that we meet our deadline,” he added.
This change is incredibly impactful for smaller industries that were not able to access electricity generated from green sources. This is because most of them consume significantly less than the 1 MW threshold, which was in place earlier.
The lack of awareness among smaller industries about the availability and need for green open access is the major hindrance in the long way towards green-energy.
“We don’t know any sources of electricity other than coal,” said owners of smaller industries and factories located in Delhi to the Down To Earth.
We are satisfied with the present arrangements and we don’t think that switching to green energy was important, they added.
Not a single one of the 20 or so industries, that were contacted was willing to look into the process mentioned in the Green Open Access Rules. Coal is currently the source of 70 percent of India’s electricity.
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