IIEC Recent News
Developing Alternate Incentive Framework for Solar Water Pump Deployment: Encouraging Sustainable Groundwater Use
Solar water pumps are a cost-effective and more environmentally beneficial option for irrigation. However, overextraction of groundwater is a serious threat posed by solar water pumps as they offer virtually free electricity throughout the day. Thus, greater incentivization is required to motivate the users and promote the use of solar water pumps with judicious use of groundwater.
IIEC is supporting CLASP in implementing a 2-year program that targets scaling up deployment and market commercialization of Solar Water Pumps (SWP) while enhancing water-use efficiency (i.e., not extracting more water than is necessary), agricultural productivity, and farmers income growth. The program will establish and demonstrate a pathway for increased deployment for SWPs. Under the program, IIEC developed and is testing an end-use incentive framework to enable market commercialization and penetration of SWP. This is being demonstrated through pilot programs with small and marginal farmers to showcase the long-term benefits of the incentive scheme. This incentive will provide farmers an alternate revenue source to mitigate against the uncertainty of productivity growth.
A Beneficiary With the Installed Solar Water Pump Under the End-use Incentive Program
