ELP – Infrastructure and Energy Digest – August 2019

The month of August witnessed significant developments in the infrastructure & energy sectors. The Dam Safety Bill, passed in the Lok Sabha is a welcome step towards standardizing and strengthening dam safety practices and institutions. The Bill largely serves to address concerns about dam safety and aims to help circumvent disasters associated with dam failures.Another beneficial step this month was the issuance of an office memorandum by the Ministry of Power, stipulating a mechanism for ensuring that the net surplus generated by stressed thermal power projects, after meeting operating expenses, would be entirely utilized for servicing debt in the first place. The Ministry of Power vide a notification also went on to amend the guidelines of tariff based competitive bidding process for procurement of power from grid connected wind power projects.The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission heard petitions filed by Juniper Green Energy Private Limited and Nisagra Renewable Energy Private Limited, against the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited, reiterating solar safeguard duty as a ‘change in law’ event.On another note, while the Andhra Pradesh Government has adopted the stance that they only wish to review those PPAs where evidence of corruption exists , it does little to ease the tension that has been created in the State over the issue. Finally, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy took a major step and stipulated that various forms of ocean energy such as tidal, wave, ocean thermal energy conversion and the like would be considered as renewable energy. All these issues have been analyzed in detail in this month’s newsletter. For each section, we have attempted to provide a supporting commentary to help the reader derive a holistic understanding of the issue at hand. We hope you find the content insightful and look forward to your feedback.