VISAKHAPATNAM: The Andhra Pradesh government has urged the Centre to introduce an interest subvention scheme that will attract many entrepreneurs from industries, especially MSMEs, to implement energy efficiency projects.
In this regard, the state energy department has written a letter to the Union ministry of power, requesting the latter to provide at least 5% interest subvention in the said scheme, which would be rolled out by the Centre in the near future.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has caused a severe financial blow to the MSMEs in the last two years. In order to provide economic relief to the Industries, including MSMEs, the state government asked the Centre to provide low interest rates to enable stakeholders/entrepreneurs to implement energy efficiency programmes in their units. This facility will help the stakeholders and state in enhancing productivity, employment generation, etc.
Energy secretary Srikant Nagulapalli, in his letter, said that the state government has been playing a proactive role in the energy efficiency movement to achieve substantial energy savings to the tune of around 25%, i.e. 15,000 million units (MU) of the total annual energy demand of 61,818 MU.
“Till date, the energy savings achieved in the state are estimated to be around 2,932 MU with monetary savings of around Rs 2,014 crore. The AP State Energy Conservation Mission, the state designated agency of Andhra Pradesh, is promoting and implementing various energy conservation and energy efficiency programmes with the support of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE). The state government is keen on implementing energy conservation building code in the building sector. This is one of the flagship programmes of energy efficiency in the state that is expected to achieve substantial energy savings,” said Srikant.
The secretary has appreciated the performance and pro-active role of BEE in scaling up of energy efficiency by motivating the State Designated Agencies (SDAs) to reach the targets in energy efficiency.
