Govt in dialogue with European Union on Carbon Tax, says Goyal
India will have to work out the financing and the availability of technology for its energy transition as the developed countries have only given lip sympathy as far as investment and funding is concerned.
Goyal pointed out that the developed countries are saying that they are providing finance and are helping us raise finance, but “the reality is that the developed countries have only given lip sympathy”.
“The models that they have created are largely around private capital and concessional finance aspect is totally missing,” he said at the ORF’s first edition of the Energy Transition Dialogue in New Delhi on 2 Nov 2023.
India’s energy transition has a very large end-to-end dimension and the government is working towards the goal of meeting the country’s energy need with a clean source, he assured.
Goyal said India is going to see huge amount of growth in the economy for the next 30 years and that is going to lead to significant demand for energy in all walks of life.
He elaborated on India’s energy transition, saying it has two dimensions: “transit from the past consumption levels and what we do to meet the needs of this growth”.
India has been raising its targets on almost every aspect of the energy transition story, by getting clean energy into the system, sharing that the Government is working on many fronts.
Citing some examples, the Minister said that India is supporting the production of clean energy equipment and opening to transition to green hydrogen and ammonia.
One of the key initiatives of the government has been the production linked incentive (PLI) programme, which has worked very well, he said, adding that it is a well thought out, well-crafted government policy to promote manufacturing in India.
The PLI scheme is not only for mobile phones, it’s across several sectors – auto components, speciality skills, technical textiles and so on. In green energy, India has some investments coming in for solar, highly efficient solar PV manufacturing, and in manufacturing green hydrogen, he underscored.
Goyal pointed out that an important element in energy transition is the transition from coal.
He said that alternate and green sources like wind or solar are intermittent sources of power that are not available on a steady state basis, throughout the day, particularly in the peak hours.
India’s annual 8%-10% growth in power also cannot be made by all the nuclear plants that are made all over the world, he said, adding that the world will have to recognise this very serious challenge of an alternate baseload to coal before they preach to India that we have to look at transiting from the old traditional sources.
On the issue of Carbon Tax, Goyal informed that there is a reporting requirement that kicked in last month and the carbon border adjustment mechanism will start sometime in 2026.
India need not be concerned about Carbon Tax because the government is in dialogue with the European Union and the European countries and their leadership, shared Goyal, adding that if the country from which the goods originate taxes carbon at the level at which the European Union taxes their domestic companies, then there will be no additional tax on Indian exports to those countries.
“So, if we collect the tax in India itself, there will be no additional tax. India will not have a disadvantage in our exports to Europe,” he said. fiinews.com
