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Modi Commits to Clean Environment by Doubling India’s Coal Tax
(Bloomberg) — India will double the tax on coal production and promote electric vehicles and renewable-energy projects to balance out emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases will raise the duty on coal to 200 rupees ($3.2) a ton, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in his budget speech for the year starting April 1. The money will be used to promote clean energy, he said, indicating India’s commitment to fight global warming.
“With regard to coal, there’s a need to find a balance between taxing pollution and the price of power,” Jaitley said.“I intend to start on that journey too.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which swept to power in May, has set itself unprecedented targets for clean energy and has increased taxes on use of fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum amid mounting international pressure to curb emissions.
The higher tax on coal will encourage investments in washeries and upgrading plants to increase fuel efficiencies, said Kameswara Rao, who oversees energy, utilities and mining at PwC India.
Cheap Coal
Coal fires about 60 percent of India’s electricity generation capacity and is among the cheapest sources of power in the country. The higher tax will lead to an increase of as much as 0.06 rupees in coal costs for every kilowatt hour of electricity, Rao said.
“As the Paris convention approaches, these steps will show the government is serious about climate change,” said Debasish Mishra, a senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. in Mumbai. “We have to take care of the environment, and at the same time use fossil fuel to make sure we have energy at a reasonable cost for our growth. It’s not an either or situation.”
Countries attending the 21st international conference on climate change in Paris at the end of this year will aim to reach an agreement on greenhouse-gas reduction. While the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest polluting nations, announced an accord in November to control their emissions, India has avoided making any specific commitments, said Bharat Bhushan Agrawal, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New Delhi. India wants to prioritize economic development, which will entail investments in new coal-generation capacity along with renewable energy, he said.
India plans to add 175 gigawatts of renewable-generation capacity by 2022, including 100 gigawatts from solar. That will help more than double the share of renewables in the mix of fuel it consumes from the current 6 percent, Piyush Goyal, the minister for coal, power and renewable energy, said in November.
Goyal is working to meet Modi’s promise of providing electricity to all. About one-third of India’s 1.25 billion people don’t have access to electricity, which deprives them of basic health and education facilities. Frequent blackouts cripple its industrial output and add to the cost of production.
India is gradually ending subsidies on fuels and has levied taxes on gasoline and diesel to fund new roads.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rajesh Kumar Singh in New Delhi at rsingh133@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jason Rogers at jrogers73@bloomberg.netIndranil Ghosh, Abhay Singh