SUSTAINABILITY – One of the biggest talking points across industries globally has garnered rightful attention from the Indian government during the announcement of The Union Budget 2023. Spearheaded by Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, on February 1st, 2023, the budget included some great initiatives promoting a greener future to battle resource depletion, eco-anxiety, and climate doom. In 2022, we released our Megatrends report highlighting how sustainability plays an extremely crucial role in accelerating the optimal use of resources without inhibiting future generations from falling short of these resources. Our Finance Minister listed "Green Growth" as one of this year's budget's seven priorities, citing that India is moving toward net zero carbon emissions by 2070.
Let us take a look at the Centre's initiatives for 'Green Growth' and energy transition
Green Hydrogen
An outlay of ₹19,700 crore for the recently launched National Green Hydrogen Mission was announced, which is said to facilitate the transition of the economy to low carbon intensity, reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports and make the country "assume technology and market leadership in this sunrise sector". She further iterated that the goal is to produce 500 MMT (million metric tonnes) of green hydrogen per year by 2030.
Energy Transition
To meet its net-zero objectives, the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has budgeted ₹35,000 crores for priority capital investment in energy transition and energy security. Net zero is nothing but cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere, by oceans and forests, for instance.
Battery Storage
One of the key ways to spur sustainable development is utilizing renewable energy sources across the industrial value chain. Keeping this as focus, the Centre announced viability gap funding for battery energy storage systems with a capacity of 4,000 MWh (megawatt hour). A detailed framework for pumped storage projects will also be formulated to successfully drive this initiative.
Renewable Energy Evacuation
Re-evacuation allows generated power to be quickly evacuated and distributed to the power grid. This year's Union Budget allocated ₹20,700 crores to construct an interstate transmission system for evacuation and grid integration of 13 gigatons of renewable energy. This is expected to be built from Ladakh with central support of ₹8,300 crore.
Green Credit Programme
A Green Credit Program will be notified under the Environment Protection Act of 1986 to encourage behavioral change. This initiative envisions incentivizing environmentally sustainable and responsive actions by businesses, individuals, and local governments, as well as helping mobilize additional resources for such activities.
Vehicle Replacement
Older vehicles that have not been serviced for a prolonged period tend to have increased emissions. Drawing attention toward this grave concern, the Vehicle Scrapping Policy mentioned in Budget 2021-22, which aims at creating an ecosystem for phasing out of unfit and polluting vehicles, was reemphasized by the Centre this year. "Replacing old polluting vehicles is an important part of greening our economy. I've allocated adequate funds to scrap old vehicles of the central government," said Sitharaman.
Cyient as a technology leader promoting sustainability
Our 30+ years of experience as a technology-led engineering partner for leading industrial companies in the energy sector and experts in multi-disciplinary engineering teams have enabled us to drive efforts toward a sustainable future. Leveraging our knowledge and skill in the ER&D space, we intend to collaborate on environmental-friendly projects and provide safe design solutions for renewable fuels such as biogas, green hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives, carbon capture (utilization) and storage, renewable (thermal) energy storage, and battery energy storage systems.
We provide guidance to our customers to choose from the best solutions catering to their specific needs throughout the entire product lifecycle, from design to manufacturing, installation and commissioning. Understanding the amount of significance technologies like IoT, connectivity, smart technologies and analytics and digital twin have garnered, we develop solutions, combining these technologies, and provide sustainable solutions to our customers, such as modular design, optimized material usage in our design and transportation to sites, and digital solutions.
About the Author
Manoj Sahu is an Industry Offering Head – Energy with 20 years of experience in leading interdisciplinary teams, collaborating on complex engineering design solutions and cost reduction programs for power generation and renewable energy products. His areas of expertise include leadership with strong product management, product development and design thinking skills. He provides thought leadership to business stakeholders with market research and go-to-market strategy for new offerings.
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