Power Finance Corp., India’s largest
state-run lender to electricity utilities, plans to more than
double lending for renewable energy projects within a year as
coal-fired plants become riskier investments.
The company’s approved loans to projects, particularly
solar and wind plants, will increase to 15 billion rupees ($305
million), or 4 percent of the total in the next financial year,
from 6.75 billion rupees, or just 1.2 percent in the year ending
in March, Chairman Satnam Singh said. The company does not plan
to increase its total loan outlays of 450 billion rupees in
2013, he said.
“Given that fossil fuel costs have gone up, investments in
wind and solar are surging,” Singh said in an interview in New
Delhi. “We’re not afraid to go at renewable in a big way where
lending happens much faster, within six months.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to spend more than $300
billion to expand India’s electricity systems in an attempt to
spur 9 percent economic growth by 2017. An increasing share of
that may be directed toward clean energy projects as lenders
shun new conventional power projects that are facing risks such
as rising fuel costs.
Coal imported from Australia and
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