G Jagadish Reddy, Minister of state for Energy of Telangana said that the change in the existing guidelines by the Centre is needed to give a fillip to waste to power from the municipal waste.
He further said that the state government had received applications for generation of renewable energy for 90 MW and of them 76 MW projects had been sanctioned and are operating with a capacity of 19.8 MW. So far the State has commission 38.4 MW projects in Telangana.
Several industrialists were not coming forward to install units to generate power from waste due to stringent norms for disposal of waste, he added.
Responding to questions on renewable energy raised by MLCs — U Gangadhar Goud, K Naveen Kumar and Aluguballi Narsi Reddy — in the legislative council on Monday, the minister said the other reason for not many people keen on setting up power plants was due to power purchase cost being fixed by the Electricity Regulatory Commission. “In various municipalities, while the plants were permitted to generate 38 MW, only 19 MW is being generated,” Jagadish Reddy said.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLC and former MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha said the state government should provide basic infrastructure in newly-created mandals and MPTCs and MPPs should be empowered to hoist flags in the respective mandal offices.
Speaking for the first time in the legislative council after being elected as an MLC, Kavitha said though there was a deficit of Rs 500 crore from the Centre, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao sanctioned Rs 500 crore to the local bodies.