Hydropower Projects: Govt issues guidelines for budgetary support for flood moderation

New Delhi: The Ministry of Power has issued detailed guidelines for the budgetary support for flood moderation and for enabling infrastructure – roads and bridges with regard to hydropower projects. The basic objective of the budgetary support for these components is to reduce tariff levels of these projects, thus ensuring that the consumers are charged costs related to power components only.

Budgetary support for flood moderation:

The financial value of flood moderation will be worked on by technical agencies, viz., CWC, etc. in accordance with the guidelines. The amount required for flood moderation or storage costs shall be released, through Ministry of Power budgetary provisions after appraisal of each project, on a case-to-case basis, by Public Investment Board (PIB)/ Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) as per due process.

Budgetary support for enabling infrastructure:

The budgetary support for Enabling Infrastructure i.e., roads/ bridges for Hydropower projects will be on a case-to-case basis. It would be provided after appraisal or approval of each project by PIB/ CCEA as per the extant rules/due process and would be provided by the Ministry of Power.

The limit of this budgetary support for such roads and bridges would be i) Rs 1.5 crore per MW for projects up to 200 MW and ii) Rs 1.0 crore per MW for projects above 200 MW. It shall be provided for projects starting construction after March 8, 2019, i.e., the date of notification of the cabinet approval.

The government of India has approved various measures to promote the hydropower sector in India.  Through these measures, it targets achieving a cumulative hydropower installed capacity of 75 GW by the year 2030. This will also underline India's unwavering commitment to mitigate climate change by promoting clean and green hydropower. These measures include declaring large hydropower projects, i.e., projects with the capacity of more than 25 MW as a renewable energy source, hydropower purchase obligation, tariff rationalization measures for reducing tariff, budgetary support for flood moderation component of hydropower projects and budgetary support for the cost of enabling infrastructure, i.e., roads and bridges.

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