As the temperatures soar high and demand for power continues to touch new highs every year, analysts expect supportive reforms in the upcoming Budget to strengthen the country’s power infrastructure.

“There is a sharp increase in adverse weather events. And most of the transmission and distribution systems do not have preparedness for such events. Funding and creation of climate resilient power infra is a segment where we can see the government focusing on,” said Anujesh Dwivedi, partner at Deloitte India.

Moreover, as the government stays persistent on adding coal-based capacity until RE becomes viable enough to meet the peak power demand, incentives towards balance of plant can be expected.

Dwivedi noted that due to minimal thermal capacity addition for a long time, the entire ecosystem on main plant equipment has been inactive. “Government may come up with some incentives to reactivate that balance of plant segment.”

The industry also sees concessional duty on imports of solar modules required for renewable energy projects particularly green hydrogen projects to expedite RE capacity build up.

“Policy support for the green hydrogen mission to address infrastructure, storage, and transportation related challenges would be important to establish India as a global hub for green hydrogen production,” said Raju Kumar, Energy Tax Leader, EY India.

While the government has been focusing on building low carbon assets, efforts need to be made towards decarbonising existing hard to abate sectors, experts note. “Therefore, if some budgetary allocation is made towards creating a few pilot projects of carbon capture to demonstrate existing industries which are hard to abate, helping them decarbonise would be a welcome step,” Dwivedi said.

In the interim Budget, the government announced a new rooftop solar scheme with intentions to install rooftop solar in 1 crore households while providing viability gap funding for offshore wind projects. The measures are in sync with the government’s target of increasing the share of RE capacity to 500 GW by 2030. The government, last year, has also announced Green Hydrogen Mission with an outlay of Rs. 19,744 crores up to FY30 in an attempt to switch to alternative non-fossil fuels.

However, to be able to achieve the ambitious targets, industry seeks skill development and innovation initiatives pertaining to green technology.

“Provisions to bolster the skilling and innovation initiatives pertaining to green technology will be key in bridging the existing gaps,” said Arun Awasthy, President & Managing Director, Johnson Controls India.

Dwivedi too highlighted that some allocation towards skill development especially focusing on distributed RE sources like rooftop solar, battery energy storage system, and EV charging could be a welcome step.

The industry sees a continued support to domestic manufacturing capacity in the form of production linked incentive schemes and programs on promoting new innovative solar applications for cooking or other purposes especially in rural areas.

“We expect more incremental focus on corporate RE procurement, more effective implementation of green open access regime, more virtual PPAs (power purchase agreements) to be incentivised through some mechanism, and continuation of support in the form of PLI for RE manufacturing,” Dwivedi said.

Udit Garg, CEO & Director, Kundan Green Energy believes that with a robust investment inflow enabled by policy stimulus in the upcoming Budget, the sector can add 50-60 GW of RE capacity annually from the present 10 GW to 15 GW.