India’s renewable energy sector is at an exciting juncture. The country has consistently ranked amongst the top 4 nations globally in the E&Y Renewables Country Attraction Index between 2016 and 2019.
From The Ground –
However, the last year saw the momentum in solar taper owing to tender cancellations, drying up of funding, inconsistent policy making, and import safeguard measures.
Will We Achieving The Target?
With around 86 GW of renewable energy capacity installed till the end of 2019, India is still a far cry from its ambitious target of 175 GW by 2022, which includes 100 GW of solar from utility-scale and rooftop.
The recent Crisil report, REturn to Uncertainty, echoes the same thoughts. As per the report, “India will achieve only 60 GW of solar by 2022 as per the current run-rate. The country may not come close to its solar target unless appropriate steps are taken to address the challenges.”
However, the MNRE denounced this Crisil report and asserted that the country’ is on track ’s clean power capacity will exceed the goal of 175 GW by 2022.
MNRE Thinks We Will…
According to the data released by MNRE, by the end of 2019, 86 GW of RE capacity was achieved. This includes 34 GW of solar and 38 GW of wind energy. Also, nearly 36 GW of clean energy is under installation, and 35 GW is underbidding.
This means India is likely to install more than 87% of the targeted capacity by September 2021.
The most recent scheme for encouraging round-the-clock (RTC) power aims to promote hybrid energy and battery storage integrated (HES) projects. Awarding manufacturing-linked solar projects to giants like Adani and Azure Power was another milestone.
However, industry seems divided on the achievement of the target pointing to issues plaguing the industry.
Reference- CRISIL Report, E&Y Renewables Country Attraction Index, Mercom India, Economic Times