Cash-strapped Solar City to Light India's Paris Show

The finance ministry had reduced the administration’s budget for the current fiscal from `860 crore to `634.82 crore.
Cash-strapped Solar City to Light India's Paris Show

CHANDIGARH: The Narendra Modi government may be all set to flaunt India’s green credentials at the 21st Paris Climate Change Conference (COP21), which begins on Monday, but it doesn’t have funds for the solar project being showcased at the event.

The Chandigarh administration’s model solar city project has been selected as India’s solar theme at COP21, but the administration has cut down the project’s budget. For installation of 5MW solar plants, a budget of `32 crore was proposed in the first installment but only `10 crore has been released. Now, plants of just 2MW capacity can be installed. This is when the Centre seeks to generate 100MW of electricity from Chandigarh by 2022.

The finance ministry had reduced the administration’s budget for the current fiscal from `860 crore to `634.82 crore. A source said the administration can achieve 40MW by itself but beyond that it will need the private sector to pitch in. So far, 80 applications for the same have been received. The administration has offered that people producing solar energy can sell it to a distribution company at `8.51 per unit.

So far, solar plants have been installed on 101 government buildings. It will soon be generating 5.3MW of power. By April 2016, it hopes to double the capacity to 10.3MW.

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