The State Government has urged the Centre to fund the proposed 600-MW pump storage project (a hydropower project), estimated to come up at Rs 1,600 crore out of the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF).
Raising the issue at the recently-held NITI Aayog meeting, Energy Secretary Hemant Sharma said the Centre should provide 75 per cent of the project cost from the NCEF to which Odisha has contributed Rs 6,400 crore by way of cess on coal during 2016-17.
Sharma said as hydro power is green energy; the Union Government needs to fund the project when Odisha has not even got any benefit from the NCEF. When clean energy cess has been increased from Rs 200 to Rs 400 per metric tonne, other States have been provided funds from the NCEF to facilitate generation of solar energy. Hence, Cenre must provide funds from NCEF to Odisha for promotion of renewable energy, the Secretary argued furher.
Notably, the Odisha Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC) has planned establish a Pump Storage Project to address the peak power requirement of the State. The WAPCOS has been entrusted to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for the project. Raising the issue of inclusion of Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) beneficiary list in rural electrification schemes, Sharma said
the SECC-2011 data is needed for wider coverage of households in the programmes.
Now BPl-1997 list which covers only about 44 lakh Households are utilized for Rural electrification, The SECC-2011 final list has a total 86.77 lakh households against 44 lakh in the BPl-1997 list, which is utilised for the rural electrification.