The Union Finance Minister had announced in his Budget Speech for 2010-11 the proposal to establish a National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF) for funding research and innovative projects in clean energy technologies.

To build the corpus for the fund a cess of Rs 50 per tonne on coal had been announced in the Budget Speech.  The same was notified on June 22, 2010 specifying July 1, 2010 as the date from which the cess takes effective.

An Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) has been constituted to approve the projects/schemes eligible for financing under the NCEF and also to draw-up the guidelines for the fund.  The IMG has Finance Secretary as Chairman and Secretary (Expenditure) and Secretary (Revenue) as members, besides representatives from Ministries of Power, Coal, Chemicals & Fertilizers, Petroleum & Natural Gas, New & Renewable Energy and Environment & Forests.

To seek suggestions and draw-up the modalities for operation of the fund and appraisal of the projects submitted, a meeting was convened at PetroFed on August 4, 2010.  It was chaired by Shri P. K. Singh, Director (R&A), Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas and attended by key representatives of major PSU oil & gas companies besides the CHT, OISD and PCRA.

A discussion paper prepared earlier by PetroFed on the basis of inputs received from member companies and CHT was debated and a final paper forwarded to MoP&NG the same day.  The same was appropriately submitted by MoP&NG for finalisation.