Public policies to promote renewable energy technologies: Learning from Indian experiences

Abstract

The excessive usage of the non-conventional energy especially the fossil fuels has led to the degradation of the environment. This calls out for the countries to develop, the energy policies in order to deal with this serious issue. Energy policies play a vital role in developing innovations and cost reduction techniques for promoting Renewable Energy (RE) and its adoption. India, one of the fastest growing energy consumer, is putting great efforts in the production and consumption of RE and to deal with the environmental degradation. The country has signed the Paris Agreement and launched a number of policies for supporting RE. Energy being the subject of federal and state governments makes state governments a crucial stakeholder in this initiative. In order to promote and augment RE, different states of India have also implemented policies at their level to support the national target such as feed in tariffs, capital subsidies, incentives etc. However, the effectiveness of every policy differs from each other. This paper will analyse the impact of different policy tools in the renewable sector covering five major states of India viz. Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Punjab and Rajasthan. The study reviews renewable energy related public polices of these states in subject, which will be learning from these states experiences and combining it with their local resources will help the other states to perform better in the renewable sector.