The Hindu : Ministry begins work towards `no power shortage' target

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 09, 2002

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National

Ministry begins work towards `no power shortage' target

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JULY 8. To keep its promise of no power shortages after 2012, the Union Power Ministry today kicked off its first advance exercise to achieve an additional generating capacity of 1,07,000 MW in the next 10 years — 44,000 MW in the next five years and 63,000 MW more in the subsequent five.

At a meeting organised here today to work out the nitty-gritty of capacity additions during the Tenth and Eleventh Five-Year Plan periods, the Union Power Minister, Suresh Prabhu, announced that the Tenth Plan outlay for this sector had been hiked by 270 per cent to ensure adequate project funding. Simultaneously, another expert committee under Udhesh Kholi, former Chairman of the Power Finance Corporation, was looking into macro-level financing issues.

The pull-out of foreign companies from power projects and the lukewarm response of fresh investors also came up for consideration. However, Mr. Prabhu said that a recent road show held in the United Kingdom had shown that there was still interest among foreign companies about investing in India. To cash in on this, the Government had brought about structural changes in policies — such as focussing on power distribution reforms along with stress on investment in generation capacity — to facilitate investments.

These changes had been prompted by the experience of the past 10 years, which saw many investors coming in and then quitting because transmission and distribution continued to be in Government hands, thereby creating insecurity about payment for the electricity generated.

The State Governments, which had earlier left the issue of investing in the power sector to private investors, had also been brought around to considering fresh projects during the Tenth Plan period (2002-07). This had happened due to intensive interaction between the Centre and the State Governments, the Minister said.

Mr. Prabhu spoke of standardisation of equipment to reduce project cost. He called for a strict monitoring of projects to control time and cost overruns.

Today's meeting is part of a two-day exercise aimed at an intensive interaction among the States and Central Ministries in charge of coal, petroleum, railways and programme implementation, as well as private power producers and financial institutions to work out plans for creating additional generation capacity. Such events will be organised every year to monitor the progress towards achieving the objective of power-on-demand by 2012.

Meanwhile, the Power Ministry has operationalised the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), created under the Energy Conservation Act of March 2002, which will promote energy conservation.

The BEE will have separate programmes covering industrial, agricultural and building sectors and will lay down energy consumption standards.

Also, labelling on appliances and equipment will be undertaken by the BEE, which will set standards of energy consumption for refrigerators, air-conditioners, storage water heaters, motors, agricultural pump sets, industrial fans and blowers and compressors.

Appropriate labels on these equipment will enable consumers to make choice decisions and bring about substantial saving of energy.

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