The Government will bring out a new policy for the hydro power sector next fiscal to boost this clean source of energy, a senior official said on Monday. “We are working on a New Hydro Policy for quite sometime. We will do (bring) it next fiscal,” Power Secretary PK Pujari told reporters at a TERI event here. The new policy also seeks to bring large hydro projects at par with smaller ones in terms of availing various benefits.

At present, small hydro projects of up to 25 MW capacities are considered as renewable energy initiatives and are eligible for various incentives by the Government. Developers of large hydro power projects would get a big boost if the distinction between small and large hydro projects is removed. Of the 314.64 GW installed power generation capacity, 44.18 GW comes from large hydro projects (above 25 MW) and 50.01 GW from other renewable power generation capacities as of January 2017.

India has set an ambitious target of adding 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022, which includes 100 GW of solar, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from bio-power and 5 GW from small hydro-power (up to 25 MW capacity each). On energy efficiency in buildings, Pujari said, “SPARSH is a brilliant initiative to integrate green technologies for efficient green buildings. This would chart the way forward for all the future green buildings and address the issue of energy security and energy efficiency as well.”

“SPARSH is an effort by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) to bring an economically viable and structurally sound green building option to the masses. He also said that while there is a need to scale up the production of houses using this technology, the demand can only be generated through a shift in the mindset of the people.”