The corpus of the fund will come from levying a clean energy cess of Rs 50 on every tonne of coal produced in India.
The cess will also be extended to imported coal, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in the Budget.
Mukerjee has also introduced tax sops in solar energy, wind energy, electric cars and light-emitting diodes (LED)—a highly energy-efficient source of lighting for streets, homes and offices—all of which will reduce India’s carbon footprint.
The tax benefits coupled with a 60 per cent increase in the allocation of ministry of new and renewable energy may go a long way to help the industry to green technologies to the market unlike the existing system in which popularity of these technologies are restricted due to their very high initial cost.
To clean up the textile town Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, Mukherjee announced an one-time grant of Rs 200 crore for installation of a zero liquid discharge system to sustain the industry in an eco-friendly manner.
A special package of Rs 200 crore has been announced for Goa to restore its erosion-prone beaches and increase the state’s green cover.
The national Ganga River Basin Authority, which has the mandate of ensuring a complete halt on the discharge of untreated sewage into the river, has been given Rs 500 crore—double from its last year’s allocation of Rs 250 crore—to kickstart the clean-up process immediately. The allocation for the lake conservation programme has gone up by Rs 300 crore, a sizable chunk of which may go to the restoration of Wullar Lake, Asia’s largest fresh-water lake, in Jammu and Kashmir.