India, Oct. 13 -- The ministry of power has notified a formula for green tariffs for large (greater than 100 kW) electricity consumers to encourage green power uptake from distribution companies. Our analysis finds that this push to create demand for green power (based on renewable energy, or RE) has several limitations, including:

To study green tariffs, we analysed current cost and retail pricing structures across twenty-three distribution companies in 11 states, which cover almost two-thirds of units sold across India. Costs include both fixed and variable costs of generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. We also quantified pricing distortions that include cross-subsidies, where commercial and industrial (C&I) consum...