An Evaluation of Environmentally Benign Policies of Electricity Act in India

Since the inception of the Electricity Act 2003, several policies, schemes and incentives were announced to tackle the problem of environmental pollution and global warming. Therefore, in this paper, we intend to look at the various initiatives (policies, schemes, and other initiatives) to further the said objective as well as the change in ground reality due to these measures in India. We have followed a qualitative research methodology to explore the existing policy documents and data to analyze the impact of these policies. The findings of our study are that though there is a luxuriant growth in installed capacity of renewable energy in recent years in India, however, these policies could not make any dent in environmental impact in terms of CO2 emissions. Fossil fuel still dominates power generation. Further research can be done to ascertain the reasons why the government could not achieve its self-assigned target in various schemes and policies, in terms of environmental impact and what further steps can be taken in this direction.