Page 14 - Banking Finance October 2015

P. 14

ROUNDUP

Target commercial offices, industries for rooftop solar Railways on move to dis-

mission: Goyal pose off waste and gen-

Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for To facilitate such rooftop solar project erate energy
Power, Coal and New & Renewable development, Goyal launched Indian
Energy during a Workshop on Rooftop Renewable Energy Development The Railways will set up plants at
Solar Projects shared his views that Agency's (IREDA) loan scheme. IREDA New Delhi
commercial offices and industries are will provide loans at 9.9 - 10.75 per and Jaipur
low-hanging fruits which can be tar- cent to system aggregators and devel- station for
geted early as part of the country's opers of rooftop projects. disposal of
rooftop solar power mission. solid waste in
Meanwhile, Goyal has also urged the an environ-
But here, state electricity boards need gathering to discuss how to bring down
to socialize and give up some of their transmission costs for solar power. mental-friendly manner and genera-
high tariff yielding cus- tion of energy from the garbage.
tomers. As part of the re- On the criticism that the The plants are proposed to be set
worked national solar Government's solar mis- up under the waste-to-energy
mission target of 100,000 sion will help Chinese project of the Railways.
MW by 2022, 40,000 MW manufacturers, Goyal
is to come from rooftop said. "If we don't set high It is believed that there will be two
solar projects. targets, how will domestic plants, first-of-its-kind in the Rail-
manufacturers get en- ways, for disposal of Municipal Solid
Commercial offices and industries typi- couraged to produce more? It is the Waste (MSW) generated at stations
cally use diesel generators as a back- targets that have attracted interest as well as conversion of MSW into
up to the grid connected power. The from players like SoftBank who are electricity and synthetic gas.
blended cost of power for such entities willing to invest $20 billion over the
comes to around Rs.9-10 a unit. next 10 years in India." The proposed capacity for handling
waste is 20 tonnes a day at New
Solar power developers like Azure Solar power equipments are still Delhi station and 5 tonnes a day at
Power, SunSource Energy and others largely imported. Apart from where Jaipur station area. Railways will
have begun entering into power pur- there is a requirement for certain per- provide 1,000 sq metre land on li-
chase agreements with such entities centage of domestic content, more cence fee basis in the vicinity for
which brings down the blended cost of than 60-70 per cent of the equipment setting up the plant.
power by at least 15 percent. is imported.
RITES, a railways subsidiary, has in-
PM Modi woos US investment, promises to remove vited Expression of Interest for the
project. "Organisations having the
bottlenecks expertise and experience in the field
are invited to express their interest
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had courted the top financial in the project. Plants would be run
sector CEOs, outlining opportunities in various sectors and prom- on build, operate and maintain ba-
ising to address their concerns while removing bottlenecks for ease sis for a period at least 10 years,"
of doing business. After his second visit to the US in one year and the official said.
meeting with eight of the top ten financial entities in the US, in-
cluding JP Morgan and Blackstone, PM Modi outlined efforts made during the The Railways generate a substantial
last 15 months to increase investment in key areas like infrastructure. amount of solid waste by passen-
gers, visitors, vendors and sand
"Roundtable with Financial Sector CEOs was a fruitful exchange of views on staff.
economic issues. Urged CEOs to invest in India in various sectors," he tweeted.
PM Modi outlined the government's reform agenda as well as improving eco-
nomic climate and said "any bottlenecks which should not be there, will not be
there", the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.

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