Govt to tweak norms on renewable energy

The government needs to tweak its policies on renewable energy to make wind and solar power projects cost-effective. It needs to do so to achieve the ambitious target of doubling the capacity to 55,000 MW by 2017, according to a recent survey conducted by the Climate Policy Initiative and Indian School of Business. Renewable energy requires policy support as unsubsidised energy is 52-129 per cent more expensive than conventional power. As per the current policy, the government provides support through a combination of state-level feed-in tariffs and federal subsidies in the form of a generation based incentive, viability gap funding, and accelerated depreciation.