Nirmala Sitharaman’s Rs 150 crore amps up Maharashtra’s green vehicle plan | Mumbai News – Times of India

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MUMBAI: Transport commissioner Vivek Bhimanwar on Wednesday said the state will be allocated Rs 150 crore as part of the Union Budget provisions for scrapping of old government vehicles and ambulances. The Budget pushes for faster adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and encourages use of green energy.
“We have already issued a notification and identified 4,632 old government vehicles, whose age is over 15 years, and will now also include old ambulances for scrapping as per announcement made by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman,” he said.
Officials said vehicles will be scrapped earliest by March 31 and latest by June 30.
In her Budget speech, Sitharaman said: “Vehicle replacement – which is replacing old polluting vehicles – is an important part of greening our economy. States will be supported in replacing old vehicles and ambulances.”
She said the entire 50-year loan to states has to be spent on capital expenditure within 2023-24, a significant part of which is for scrapping old government vehicles.
As for electric vehicles, she said: “To steer the economy on the sustainable development path, battery energy storage systems with capacity of 4,000MWH (megawatt-hour) will be supported with viability gap funding.”
Commenting on this, GreenCell Mobility COO Sumit Mittal said initiating viability gap funding for battery energy storage systems would kick-start the creation of critical infrastructure for EVs.
“Further, reduction in custom duty on lithium-ion cells, as announced in the budget, will help in incentivising the product cost to end consumers,” said Revamp Moto CEO Pritesh Mahajan. “This will boost sales of EVs in Maharashtra and other parts of the country. And, it will be further catalysed by the government’s initiative of strict scrapping policy,” he added.
Environmentalists welcomed the budget’s emphasis on green growth. They said reduction of taxes in the present budget on blended compressed natural gas (CNG) will push green mobility. They said the Centre was also promoting green hydrogen as a cheaper and efficient fuel for the future.
Experts said that encouraging coastal shipping for passenger transport through public-private-partnership (PPP) mode with viability gap funding will be a boost for BEST, which plans to operate water taxis in 2023.
BEST plans to run water taxis from the jetty on the eastern waterfront to Navi Mumbai (Belapur), JNPT, Uran and other destinations by the end of the year.
“We are presently working on a detailed project report on how to make the water taxi project efficient and financially viable, with PPP or viability gap funding,” an official of BEST said.
The finance minister also mentioned other green initiatives such as inter-state transmission system for grid integration of 13GW renewable energy from Ladakh, which will be constructed with an investment of Rs 20,700 crore.
She announced a ‘green credit’ programme which will incentivise environmentally sustainable and responsive actions by companies, individuals and local bodies. “These green growth efforts help in reducing carbon intensity of the economy and provide for large-scale green job opportunities,” said Sitharaman.

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