The Hindu Business Line : Centre plans SEZ for renewable energy equipment

Stress on green energy: The Union Minister for Power, Mr Sushilkumar Shinde (left), and the Minister for New and Renewable Energy, Mr Vilas Muttemwar, at a National Conference on Renewable Energy in the Capital on Thursday. —

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New Delhi, Sept. 6 The Centre is planning dedicated Special Economic Zones (SEZ) for the production of equipments involved in the renewable energy generation sector. The move is aimed at giving a fillip to renewable energy generation, besides developing India as a manufacturing and research hub for equipments used in the setting up of ‘green power’ facilities in the country and abroad.

“We have decided to set up SEZ’s for the renewable energy sector to be constructed purely on a private-public partnership model,” Mr Vilas Muttemwar, Minister of State for New and Renewable Energy, said here on Thursday.

Interest from 5 states

“Five states — Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh — have shown interest and a final decision on the location will be taken shortly,” he said at a renewable energy symposium here. Mr Muttemwar said the proposed SEZ’s would be built in an area of around 1,000 hectares on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis, adding that the modalities involving acquisition of land for the zones were currently under discussion with the interested States.

The proposed Zones would house units involved in manufacturing and testing renewable energy equipment. “Many manufacturers, both domestic and international, have been urging us for a facility which would act as a hub for research and development, manufacture and export, considering our competitiveness in the sector. We are in an advanced stage of negotiations with several interested players who have evinced interest in using India as a base for regional and global operations,” he added.

Currently, around 7.7 per cent of the country’s total energy generation comes from renewable sources, with wind energy, biomass projects and mini hydel projects forming the mainstay of India’s renewable energy effort. The country has an installed renewable generation capacity of 10,622.45 MW and the Centre is targeting the addition of another 14,000 MW of renewable energy capacity during the Eleventh Five Year Plan.

Mr Muttemwar also said the Government plans to electrify all remote villages in the country using renewable energy sources by the end of the current Plan period. While, 4,000 remote villages and hamlets have already been covered through rural electrification projects under the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidutikaran Yojana so far, Mr Muttemwar said the Ministry is working on such electrification to cover another 2,700 villages by March 2012.

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