New Delhi: A Parliamentary Committee on Energy has expressed shock over the poor initiative being undertaken by the Minister of New and Renewable Energy to install 40 GW of Solar Power by setting up over 50 Solar parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects by 2022 across the country. The committee in its 28th report tabled in the Lok Sabha recently said that against this target, 39 solar parks with an aggregate capacity of 22,879 MW have been approved to be set up in 17 States.
“Out of these approved Solar parks, infrastructure in 8 Solar parks is almost fully developed where solar projects of aggregate capacity of 6580 MW have also been commissioned and 4 Solar parks are partially developed where solar projects of aggregate capacity of 1365 MW have been commissioned,” the committee chaired by JD (U) MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh said.
The Committee noted that there is a target to install 40 GW of Solar Power by setting up over 50 Solar parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects by 2022. The Committee observed that the remaining 11 solar parks with an aggregate capacity of 17,121 MW have not even got the approval of the Ministry although these Solar parks have to be developed and projects therein commissioned by 2022.
Further, only 20 percent of the approved solar parks are fully developed so far and another 10 percent are only partially developed leaving as much as 70 percent unachieved. The Committee is disappointed with the slow progress made so far as the Ministry has been able to fully develop 8 Solar parks only in more than 5 years (2015-20) and an aggregate capacity of 32,055 MW is yet to be commissioned in order to achieve the stipulated target by 2022.
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However, the officials from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy have told the committee that the major challenge in the development of Solar parks is the acquisition of land that is dependent upon cooperation from the State Governments and other stakeholders. The Committee believes that the exercise of setting targets is rendered meaningless if Ministry-level approvals take such an undue long time.
“The Committee would therefore expect the process of granting approvals to be completed expeditiously so that the project can be implemented in a given time frame,” the report noted. It also suggested that the Ministry should actively explore the option of using surplus land available with various public sector undertakings and different State governments for setting up solar parks expeditiously.
“The Ministry should encourage all the airports in a time-bound manner, to set up solar projects on the lines of Kochi Airport which is the first fully solar-powered airport in the world,” the committee said in its report.
However, the government officials said that the Ministry is making concerted efforts to achieve the target of completion of solar parks with an aggregate capacity of 40 GW by 2023-24. The Ministry said that it has introduced a new Mode (Mode-8) of implementation under the solar park scheme with a provision to incentivize the States. “The CPSUs and State Government agencies are actively involved and are developing parks under this Mode,” the Ministry said.
