ProSPER.Net Project: Decentralised Energy Interventions in China, India, and Thailand – Success Factors and Policy Recommendations
Photo: James Hughes, Beijing
This ProSPER.Net project was led by TERI University, as a collaboration between the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), and Tongji University. It showed a detailed assessment of the policy and regulatory interventions, more specifically, the fiscal and financial instruments shaping the development of decentralised energy systems in China, India, and Thailand. Although sectoral peculiarities differ significantly across these countries, all of three are experiencing some form of revolution in the energy sector, with a specific focus on transiting to a clean energy regime. The analysis showed that the larger economic and political settings of the countries govern the decentralised renewable energy sector to a significant extent. Incentives in the form of subsidies, tax concessions such as tax holidays, relaxation of import tax and other taxes, a priority sector consideration for bank lending, are widely used across all three countries. However, there are pronounced variations in the use of specific financial instruments to create incentives for decentralised renewable energy systems. Overall there have been efforts by all countries to transit to smarter ways of subsidy disbursement. Read more on ProSPER.Net’s analysis and policy recommendations here.