Chennai: Hotels go green, seek 80 per cent depreciation benefits

Chennai: From rainwater harvesting mechanism to effective waste management systems, many medium and large hotels are turning towards solar and other forms of renewable energy to power their needs. And with increasing patronage among its members, hotel association wants the government to amend its guidelines and reclassify the hotels.

For successful and quick implementation of adopting renewable energy technology in hotels, the Union Tourism Ministry needs to provide incentives to hotels. “Some of these include 50 per cent subsidy for installing any form of renewable energy and special 80 per cent depreciation benefit to hotels for installing any form of renewable energy,” says Dilip Datwani, hon. Secretary FHRAI (Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India).

Also, small and mid-sized hotels should be allowed to purchase green power from non-fossil parks such as solar farms and wind-mill farms. Several medium and large hotels have already invested in various forms of renewable energy systems and as a result they incur large fixed costs such as payroll, power, insurance, property tax, etc. and hence the need for subsidies and other sops, it is argued.

The Sheraton Grand Chennai Resort & Spa, for instance, processes waste water through a sewage treatment plant on its premises. The recycled water is then used for landscaping and in the cooling tower.

The Tamil Nadu government in its Solar Energy Policy 2019 aims at achieving an installed capacity of 9,000 MW by 2023. But the State managed to achieve a little over 2,000 MW as of March 31, 2018. This capacity was about 10 percent of the country's installed capacity in the solar sector. The new policy comes at a time when Tamil Nadu has lost its leadership position in rooftop solar capacity. With an installed capacity of 473 MW (as on September 2018) in rooftop solar segment, Maharashtra has emerged the leader in this segment, pushing Tamil Nadu to the second position with an installed capacity of 312 MW, according to Bridge to India, a solar energy consulting firm.

The policy hopes to create a framework that will help accelerate development of solar installations in the State, promoting both utility category and consumer category solar energy generation through various enabling mechanisms. About 40 percent of the target (9,000 MW) will be earmarked for consumer category solar energy systems, the policy document said.