India – Wind energy as a tax-saving mechanism

Everybody knows Aishwarya Rai as a successful actor in India. But few know that she is an adroit tax planner, willing to invest in novel schemes that provide tax shelters. She’s among a few individual investors in India to have invested in a wind turbine. While companies have warmed up to the renewable energy concept, thus fuelling a 100% compounded annual growth rate for the wind energy turbine industry for the past few years, some multi-crore Hindu undivided families have also caught on to the benefits that flow out of setting up wind energy turbines. However, Tulsi Tanti, chairman and managing director of Suzlon Energy, says that awareness in India among individual investors on the benefits of wind turbine energy is very low. Both as a renewable energy and also as a tax-saving mechanism. “Abroad, doctors, architects, farmers have all caught on to the concept. To be honest, we are not promoting the concept very aggressively,” he says.

For Suzlon Energy, catering to individuals who invest a minimum of Rs 1.5 crore means putting in place added paraphernalia for processing that many more documents. However, Suzlon Energy also plans to set up wind farm cooperatives to cater to the demand. The wind energy industry has been lobbying for benefits to be passed on to individual investors so that wind energy could partially offset the needs of the electricity starved nation. It has received support from the renewable resources ministry which is taking it up with the finance ministry. Big companies such as Bajaj Auto have benefited from investing in wind power in two ways — getting a fix for their power costs for 20 years and at the same time, substantially reducing their taxes.

The company pays about 20 paise per unit of power consumed against the going rate of Rs 4.50 per unit in some states and has already recovered the investment it made in 2001-02 for wind energy turbines generating 68 MW. “What they have also done is to freeze their power costs for 20 years, which is the life of a wind turbine,” says Tanti. The industry is trying to get accelerated depreciation benefit of 80% of its cost converted to production tax credit of the same amount.