The ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has proposed a framework for promoting application of distributed renewable energy (DRE) in rural areas.
With this, the ministry 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 MNRE has stated that it would develop a regularly updated list of DRE livelihood applications in consultation with stakeholders. The MNRE and other ministries and state-level institutions will help develop new devices and applications for the rural economy. 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, solar lighting systems. The ministry has sought comments on the draft by November 2020.