India is close to meeting the 40% target of green electricity share in installed capacity (under the 2015 Paris Agreement, this is to be accomplished by 2030). But since the gap between green energy potential for conventional fossil-based units and generation from these sources is equally large, there is still a long way to go before the country can achieve the same level of renewable energy share in real electricity generation. To do. to do.
When the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement aimed to have 40% of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel-based sources by 2030, such power plants accounted for just 29% of the country’s electricity capacity. Although the share of non-emitting sources in installed power capacity has now reached 38.5%, these plants are generating less than 23% of the electricity generated in the country. When the Paris Agreement was signed, about 16% of the electricity came from such plants.
If large hydro-electric power sources are excluded, installed capacity of renewable energy (RE) sources – mainly solar and wind – has increased by 127% from FY16 to the current level of 104 gigawatts (GW) . The electricity generated from these stations has registered an increase of 94%. This is mainly due to the intermittentness of generation from renewable sources that can generate electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.
At the COP26 summit in November 2021, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the country would install 500 GW of RE capacity by 2030. This was in line with the plan for a ‘net-zero’ emissions target by 2070.
Presently around 50 GW of RE capacity in India is under implementation and projects with a combined capacity of 32 GW are under various stages of bidding. The 500 GW target will also include new hydroelectric projects, which currently have an installed capacity of 46.5 GW. There are currently over 9 GW of large hydroelectric projects under construction, and another 26 GW of these are expected to be added by 2030.
The government had earlier set a target of having 175 GW of installed RE capacity (excluding hydro) by December 2022. Analysts at ICRA said the target is likely to be achieved in FY26. The agency pointed out that taking into account the projects awarded so far and the current bidding pipeline, an annual growth of 10-15 GW of RE capacity can be expected by FY25, which will add to the total green power base by that time. will add. It will take up to 160 GW. Therefore, to achieve the 2030 targets, annual capacity addition in FY26-FY30 should be around 50-60 GW, which is 5-6 times the rate of solar and wind plant installations recorded in any normal year.
April-December saw an annual growth of 9.3% in electricity generation to 1,113 billion units (BU), and most of the demand was met by the country’s coal-fired power plants, 759.9 BU, 12.8%, according to government data. compared to the same period last year. Electricity generation from these sources increased by 14.3% to 128 BU due to 15% annual increase in the country’s RE base.
Coal is the mainstay of India’s energy mix and will remain so for a few more decades, even though its share in the mix is set to move up rapidly with benign fuels such as RE and hydrogen. Based on the analysis of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the coal-based power generation capacity is expected to decline from the current level of 54% to 33% of India’s total generation capacity by FY30. At present, the total installed power generation capacity in the country is 392 GW, of which 209 GW are coal-fired units. By FY30, CEA has estimated that out of the total installed capacity of 795 GW, 266 GW will be coal-based.
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