The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has proposed a framework for promoting application of distributed renewable energy (DRE) in rural areas.
DRE applications are those which are powered by renewable energy and used for earning livelihoods directly such as solar dryer, solar powered cold storage, solar charkha and solar lighting systems.
MNRE plans to enable a market-oriented framework to attract the private sector for development and deployment of DRE livelihood applications, provide easy access to end-user finance, introduce standards, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
The framework for promotion of DRE livelihood applications allows interventions to assess demand for their deployment across sectors of rural economy.
This demand assessment activity will help in mapping needs of beneficiaries with appropriate fit to DRE livelihood applications. MNRE will develop a list of DRE livelihood applications in consultation with stakeholders, which will be updated regularly.
For standardisation of research and development, MNRE and other ministries would be helping in development of new devices and applications for rural economy.
MNRE will be pursuing financial institutions for credit facilitation.