The only requirement would be that the per kilometer cost of city transport should be equal to or less than the present per kilometer cost of diesel-driven buses
New Delhi: The minister of new and renewable energy R K Singh on Thursday said he has asked the ministry to examine an innovative bid which would involve generating renewable energy to make hydrogen fuel and for charging batteries to power the transport of an entire city.
He said that the only bid requirement would be that the per kilometer cost of city transport should be equal to or less than the present per kilometer cost of diesel-driven buses.
“I have asked the ministry to examine an innovative bid where we will take up a city and the bid will be for generating renewable energy through solar, wind, or hybrid, and using that to make hydrogen and use it to power the city transport buses,” said Singh at CII’s virtual conference on Thursday.
Initially, one entire town or one whole city would be bid out under this.
“One city will be based on hydrogen and the other city will be based on battery… In this you would generate renewable energy, recharge your battery, and run the buses… And we will see which one is cheaper and more viable,” he added.
He also said that the inistry is planning to come up with a ‘top-runner programme’ for manufacturing of higher-efficincy next-genration solar products. Something that has helped China in achieving mass-production of n-type cells.
Apart from this, the minister also said that he is going to have a meeting with the finance minister tomorrow over the issue of ‘grandfathering’ of all the projects which have been bid out and the ones which are bid out till the date customs duty is imposed.
He said that despite all efforts it still takes a long time to get orders from the regulatory commissions and it is unfortunate. “In the tariff policy also we are saying that the passthrough should be as automatic as possible. But, that passthrough has to come through the regulatory commission unless it is provided for in the bids… in the future bids we are going to provide for it,” Singh said.
Earlier this month, the ministry had said that Chinese imports for public solar power projects would be exempted from the basic customs duty if the power purchase agreements were signed before the implementation of the duty.
The Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Anurag Thakur, in the same CII conference said that the Ministry of Finance is planning to impose 20 per cent basic customs duty on solar cells, modules, and inverters to discourage imports from other countries.
About 80 per cent of all solar energy equipment imports come from China, which stood at $1.2 billion in the financial year 2018-19.
Railways minister Piyush Goyal said that the Railways plans to be 100 per cent clean energy-based by 2030 and added that their aim is to have about 20 GW of solar capacity by then, all sourced from Made in India products.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
