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Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Union Budget 2022-23 in the Lok Sabha, at Parliament, in New Delhi, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. (SANSAD TV/PTI Photo) Energy transition and climate action formed one of the central themes of the Union Budget announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tursday. While speaking of various climate priorities that the Centre will bring in through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Finance Minister’s speech was peppered with proposals and pathways to climate action, across sectors, including raising climate finance and greener public transportation.
Calling climate change one of the highest external risks facing the country, Sitharaman quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in
Glasgow saying that “what is needed is mindful and deliberate utlisation”, and that the government was committed to a strategy of low carbon development.
The Finance Minister also announced the government’s intent of 280 GW of installed capacity of solar energy by 2030, for which it allocated Rs 19,500 crore to produce “high efficiency modules”.
Calling the green economy a “sunrise economy”, Sitharaman said the “circular economy transition will help in productivity enhancement”, and has great potential for job creation including in sectors such as electronic waste management, management of used oil waste and toxic and hazardous industrial waste, end of use vehicles etc. The government is now looking at technology augmentation in these sectors, as well as convergence of sectors including the integration of the informal sector and extended user responsibility, she said.
The Finance Minister emphasised that upcoming sectors, such as e-mobility and the geo-spatial industry, were part of the sunrise economy, and said the government would promote a shift in urban public transportation, emphasising on electric vehicles as well as the creation of transportation zones which will be “fossil-fuel free”. For this, charging stations for electric vehicles will be developed across the country and scaled up, and a battery swapping policy will be brought in.
Sitharaman further announced that 5-7 per cent biomass pellets will be mandatorily used in thermal power plants, which will lead to CO2 savings of 38 MMT.
She also announced that the Environment Ministry’s Parivesh portal – a single-window platform of environmental clearances for projects – will be further streamlined for ease of doing business, and that the four different clearances for projects – environmental clearance, forest clearance, wildlife clearance and CAMPA funds – will now be carried out through a single form.
Energy efficiency and energy savings will also be prescribed for large commercial buildings, which will include energy audits and performance-linked incentives. The government will also launch four pilot projects for coal gasification.
The Centre will also push agroforestry in the country as well as the development of private forests, and will incentivise agroforestry for farmers who want to take it up.
The Finance Minister further said that sovereign green bonds will be issued as a part of the government’s overall market borrowings to mobilise resources for green infrastructure in the public sector.
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