New Delhi, Feb. 28: The Union budget has proposed initiatives to promote green technologies, but research funds for the development of renewable energy technologies have been slashed by 24 per cent.

The budget has announced reduced duties on solar lanterns and components of hybrid vehicles or fuel cell or hydrogen vehicles, but the outlay for research in renewable energy has dropped to Rs 93 crore for 2011-12 from Rs 123 crore in 2010-11.

But the overall budget outlay for renewable energy has increased to Rs 1,212 crore, from an estimated spending of Rs 1,008 crore in 2010-11.

A significant chunk of this increase will be used to provide electricity and lighting through wind, solar and other renewable energy systems to rural areas.

The budget has also proposed to allocate Rs 200 crore from the National Clean Energy Fund for environmental remediation in areas suffering from high levels of environmental pollution.

“This is really unfortunate,” said Maitree Dasgupta, a campaigner with Greenpeace. “Not only is the research fund for renewable energy cut down, an allocation for clean energy technologies is proposed to be spent on cleaning the environment.”

Environmental groups have also criticised the budget saying it has not imposed fiscal disincentives on private diesel cars and has not proposed any fiscal incentives to promote bus transport.

“The budget introduces measures to promote electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles which are vehicles of the future, while ignoring real concerns about toxic emissions from existing vehicles,” said Anumita Roy Choudhury, executive director of research at the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi.

Diesel cars currently make up 36 per cent of all new car sales, and automobile sector analysts believe this is likely to rise to about 50 per cent of sales within the next few years — unless disincentives drive consumers away from private diesel vehicles.

“Market trends show that diesel is aiding the shift to bigger cars that guzzle more fuel,” Roy Choudhury said. “Despite the fuel efficiency, bigger engines will use more fuel and cheaper diesel will encourage people to buy bigger and more powerful cars. This will undermine energy security,” she said in a statement.

The budget has not proposed any new scheme to support bus transport.