India will introduce new regulations to encourage companies to shift towards low-carbon energy sources. The new policy will allow companies to directly buy renewable power from electrical distributors by paying “green tariffs”, the government has said.

The process of buying clean energy for business will also be made easier, Raj Kumar Singh, Minister of State for Power, New and Renewable Energy said at the virtual BloombergNEF summit on June 29.

Companies that opt for renewable energy will be given open access within 15 days instead of the usual waiting time of months, Singh said. The open-access policy would encourage distributors to also meet the demand for renewable energy, he added.

The move to promote the shift to renewable energy will be a key step in decarbonising the Indian electrical grid. Factories and offices are among the largest consumers of electricity in India. The decrease in dependence on high-carbon energy will take India closer to the goals set out by the 2016 Paris Climate Deal.

India plans to get to 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The minister said that 280 GW would come from solar energy and 140 GW from wind. He added that 100 GW of that solar energy would come from Reliance Industries’ new energy business.

While the scarcity of land has been a factor in the slow development of turbine farms, Singh said that offshore wind farms will be set up to bring up the quota.

In the coming days, nuclear power is also expected to form a crucial part of India’s fight against fossil fuel energy but may face hurdles.

India’s shift to renewable energy is important to keep rising global temperatures to less than 1.5°C. Failure to do so may lead to an ecological as well as an economic disaster as India may lose 3-10 percent of its GDP annually by 2100 directly as a result of climate change, according to a recent report.

(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)