Headed a meeting of International Solar Alliance with the ambassadors of different countries

At the book release function ‘Awakening the Thinking Mind’ by Shri Balvinder Kumar

Union Minister for power Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said there is no thermal power plant in India which is stranded for want of coal, largely due to increase in coal production and improved offtake of the fuel by generation plants.

“The nation as a whole has sufficient supply of coal. Even if no coal is mined for the next 50-60 days, the power industry can be rest assured that it would get an uninterrupted supply of coal to keep plants running,” he added.

In his address at the investors’ conference here, Goyal indicated that the proposed trade union strike slated for September 2 would not have any impact on the supply situation.  He said massive quantities of coal have been allocated through e-auctions and the new coal linkage policy is under dicussion and finalisation.

“Creating sufficient power generation capacity, helping state discoms to turn around and making power affordable to all are the priority areas of the Government,” he noted.

Terming the UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) as the game changer, Goyal said its impact has been on the financial side as losses of discoms are coming down.

“Interest costs have come down and the results are encouraging. The states are serious this time in implementing power sector reforms,” he said.

According to the minister, affordability of power will be very important for the new industries to be set up and investments to flow into India especially when the appetite for expensive power is not there.  Citing the example of Punjab, which has a set a new, lower power tariff for the new industries being set up in the state, Goyal asked Maharashtra also to follow suit.  He urged the Maharashtra CM to consider a separate power tariff window for new industries and other consumers to boost power consumption.

“By 2020, India can double its power generation. That would give confidence and comfort to the industry, farmers need not be distressed and homes will not have to run dark,” Goyal said.

Source Link: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/no-power-plant-stranded-for-want-of-coal-piyush-goyal-116083100868_1.html

Meet the Honorable Cheif Minister Himachal Pradesh

At INDO-US MINISTERIAL MEET lead by Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy

Meeting with H.E. Sir Dominic Asquith, British High Commissioner to India

NEW DELHI: The power ministry plans to set up two funds of $1 billion each to enable alternative financing options for stressed power assets and renewable energy projects. The two funds have been proposed under the ambit of the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF).

“NIIF is the fund of funds within which we will set up a sub-fund which will focus on renewable energy projects and give investment support for faster ramp up of renewable energy. It is under our active consideration and we may launch it in the near future,” power minister Piyush Goyal told ET in an interview. “We are also in dialogue with certain bankers to see if we could look at a stressed power asset fund. It may take us some more months to put its framework in place.”

Asked about the size of the funds, Goyal said, “Each of these funds could easily be of the size of $1 billion.” The government set up the Rs 40,000 crore NIIF in December as an investment vehicle to fund commercially viable greenfield, brownfield and stalled projects. The power ministry’s renewable energy fund will be seeded with initial capital from a few state-run companies and will be driven largely by the private sector.

“It will be run and managed by an investment manager who will be chosen through international bidding. We would like to keep the entire fund very professionally managed – something like a Temasek or a GIC model. We have the entire framework in place. We have also got investment commitments of REC, PFC and NTPC already lined up. This fund can be launched quickly,” Goyal said. Temasek and GIC are Singapore government-owned investment firms.

Finance Minister ArunJaitley had sought investment from Singapore in NIIF at a meeting on Friday with visiting Deputy Prime Minister TharmanShanmugaratnam.

Goyal said the Centre is working on a mega investment plan for the power sector that includes extending investment support to the tune of Rs 1.1 lakh crore to states under the DeenDayalUpadhyay Gram JyotiYojana and the Integrated Power Development Scheme. Additional investments worth over Rs 1 lakh crore will materialise through the implementation of four planned ultra mega power projects of 4,000 MW capacity each.

Goyal said the recent rationalisation of rail freight rates for coal transport and the cut in prices of higher-grade coal will help to ease costly imports of the fuel. “We have also regulated coal output in the past few months, resulting in some depletion of stocks at coal mines and power stations,” he said.

The minister said he hoped distribution utilities in Haryana would start reporting profits next year and Rajasthan discoms would turn profitable in 2019 with the implementation of the UjjwalDiscom Assurance Yojana scheme.

He said controversy over electrification of NaglaFatela village in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh was a “blatant attempt by the state government at misleading the centre.” 

Source Link: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/53903114.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Met Honorable Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore Shri Tharman Shanmugaratnam in New Delhi