Govt stakeholders push for ev manufacturing to control carbon emissions in india

Govt stakeholders push for ev manufacturing to control carbon emissions in india

At the Indian Clean Transportation Summit, experts urged for financial support and business models to boost EV adoption, especially in heavy-duty trucks, to cut emissions.

New Delhi: Government officials, industry stakeholders, civil society members, and international and national experts pushed for devising sound financial support and business models to promote wider adoption and local manufacturing of electric vehicles (EVs), mainly in the heavy-duty segment, at the Indian Clean Transportation Summit held on Wednesday.

At an event organised by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the leaders discussed the roadmap to switch to clean transportation.

Heavy-duty vehicles constitute 3% of the total on-road vehicles, but they are responsible for 44% of carbon emissions in India. With the sector’s high pollution contribution that is reportedly set to quadruple by 2050, government regulators and non-government advocates of cleaner air have started focusing on transitioning towards electric vehicles in the freight sector.

The two-day annual flagship event will have multiple sessions on the transition pathways for EVs and the implementation of low-emission zones in cities.

Hindustan Times is the media partner for the event.

The big banks not being ready to lend money has emerged as a major hindrance, said Hanif Qureshi, additional secretary at the Union ministry of heavy industries. ‘Ask any of the big banks—are they lending to electric trucks (sector)? Only the non-banking financial corporations are lending at higher interest rates.’

Qureshi said that local manufacturing is required not only to grow locally but also to reduce costs. ‘Tech is not the bigger problem; it’s the economics that can solve the issue of rolling out e-trucks at scale. Unless the big banks start lending, they (manufacturers) cannot scale up the product. We are not looking at a pilot project. We are not looking at building 10,000 trucks or 20,000 trucks. We are looking at building maybe 3 to 4 lakh trucks each year.,’ he said.

He added that the electrification of trucks was essential for India because 70% of the freight moves on roads compared with 30-40% in the United States and less than 50% in Europe.

Speaking at the same panel, Subhendu J Sinha, advisor at NITI Aayog, the government’s apex policy think tank, said the government is already working on supply chain management to accelerate the adoption of EVs in India in the trucking sector. ‘At least close to 13 to 16 times the GSTs have been rationalised just to ensure that the supply chain is ready,’ he said.

He said Production-Linked Incentives (PLI) schemes and EV charging stations built by public sector oil marketing companies are setting up 22,000 charging stations, with 17,000 already operational. ‘New research and development initiatives are going to improve upon this charging status. The Bureau of Indian Standards has come up with charging equipment where both AC and DC charging can be utilised.’

Drew Kodjak, executive director of ICCT, who recently spent a year in the White House climate policy office under the Biden administration, advocated a four-point strategy to scale up decarbonisation efforts. ‘A successful policy recipe—supply-side regulations, consumer incentives, and expanding the charging infrastructure—is in the works in India. The government can steer rather than actually do the investments, but steering is important,’ he said. Finally, manufacturing locally will ensure that all of the new jobs that the government can reap the benefit of new jobs flowing from this transition.