Green growth push

New initiatives have long-term potential

“Green growth” has been listed among the seven priorities of the Budget for 2023-24. This is a welcome move, considering that acceleration in economic development is as vital as ensuring energy security and meeting climate-action goals. These objectives, obviously, are hard to meet without transition to clean and renewable energy and improvement in energy-use efficiency in all sectors — industry, agriculture, services, transportation, buildings, equipment, and others. Fortunately, the Budget seems to make an earnest bid to take care of most of these imperatives, aiming ultimately to foster an environmentally conscious lifestyle.
 

The strategies outlined for this purpose aim at incentivising the use of green hydrogen and biofuels; conserving natural ecological safeguards like mangroves and wetlands; introducing concepts like green credit; and striving for an appreciable reduction in sources of pollution through measures like replacing polluting vehicles with non-polluting ones and chemical fertilisers with organic manures. While the immediate goal, evidently, is to slash the emission intensity of the economy by 45 per cent over that in 2005, and meeting 50 per cent of the energy requirement from non-fossil sources of fuels by 2030, the longer-term objective is to move towards the net zero-emission economy by 2070.
 

Interestingly, many of the programmes mooted in the Budget for this purpose have been assigned aptly coined vernacular epithets, as is this government’s wont. These include the likes of GOBARdhan (galvanising organic bio-agro resources dhan), MISHTI (mangrove initiative for shoreline habitats and tangible incomes), Amrit Dharohar (for preserving wetlands and other vital biodiversity-sustaining ecosystems), and PM-PRANAM (PM programme for restoration, awareness, nourishment and amelioration of mother earth). A good deal of emphasis has rightly been laid on the development and use of novel sources of clean energy by setting apart a sizeable sum of Rs 35,000 crore for it. The bulk of this Energy Transition Fund would be at the disposal of the oil-marketing companies to enable them switch to new and renewable sources of energy. Though the detailed guidelines for the utilisation of this fund are yet to be framed, the indications are that this would be invested largely in promoting green hydrogen and biofuels and providing charging facilities at fuel outlets. The setting up of a National Green Hydrogen Mission was announced last month to create a hydrogen production capacity of at least 5 MMT (million metric tonnes) per annum with an associated renewable energy capacity addition of 125 Giga watts. This mission, with an allocation of Rs 19,700 crore, is expected to make India a net exporter of green hydrogen.
 

Although the government’s green initiatives would entail heavy expenses, these would be paid back sooner rather than later. In fact, going by the experience in the solar-energy sector, the payback time in the case of alternative sources of energy is rapidly shrinking, thanks to the constant inflow of cost-effective and more efficient technologies. Significantly, the Budget also envisages a green credit system to meet the financial needs of the transition to green energy. Going a step further, adequate funds have been provided for the development of battery-storage systems with a capacity of 4,000 MwH, as also for the evacuation and inter-state transmission of non-conventional energy. On the whole, the Budget’s green push, per se challenging, has the potential to pay lasting dividends.