The Central government is working on a policy for establishing data centres across the country under which a major push is likely to be given to renewable energy sources such as solar power.
Other than the data consumed by data trays or data racks, the government wants to push renewable energy consumption for other needs of the building in which a data centre is housed.
Under the new nationwide policy, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is also likely to allow states to either follow the policy in total or mould it slightly according to their needs.
Moreover, it is likely that the ministry will urge state governments to give cross-subsidy to data centres.
Currently, data centres get electricity at either very high rates or get lower electricity from other states, but have to pay a cross-subsidy surcharge.
Apart from these changes, MeitY may also suggest that data centres be considered a part of urban or semi-urban infrastructure in order to attract players from real estate to make investments in the sector
Currently there are about 40 clearances needed to establish a data centre, which is extremely time consuming.