The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has suggested the Power Ministry to instruct the State governments to strictly fulfill their Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) to get Central support for financial restructuring of their electricity distribution companies.
The New and Renewable Energy Ministry's initiative is to turn states aggressively to clean energy sources. Once the power ministry agrees to the suggestion, states will have to meet certain percentage of their energy requirement from clean (solar or wind) sources.
If the states fail to do that, they will not be able to get concessions from the Centre to make the state-owned ailing distribution companies financial viable. The move will help the government not only to achieve its clean energy target under the National Action Plan on Climate Change but also to promote renewable energy generation in a big way.
The Union government is supposed to increase the country's share of renewable energy in the total energy mix to the extent of 15 per cent by 2020.