{"id":13303,"date":"2018-07-30T11:43:23","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T15:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=13303"},"modified":"2018-07-31T15:29:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T19:29:33","slug":"india-strides-towards-clean-energy-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=13303","title":{"rendered":"India strides towards clean energy leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
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.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .. <\/p>\n

An article by L. Michael Buchsbaum in Energy Transition: the Global Energiewende<\/a><\/p>\n

It looked as if India\u2019s plan to power up the country using coal would be a disaster for the environment. But renewables changed the game: they currently make up 20% of the energy mix and are growing fast. L. Michael Buchsbaum explains.<\/p>\n

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\nNew solar and wind in India are now 20% cheaper to build than coal\u00a0(Photo by\u00a0Raj, edited,CC BY 2.0)<\/center><\/p>\n

Illustrative of India\u2019s economic miracle, just this spring, its\u00a0last village without access to electricity\u00a0was finally connected to the energy grid. But to fuel this growth, beginning in 2010 India rapidly initiated development of almost 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired energy. With the fifth largest domestic coal reserves worldwide, and Australian and Chinese mines eager to supply immediate demand, India\u2019s economic miracle seemed like game over for the health of planet Earth.<\/p>\n

But nearly simultaneous to their swift coal build up, India also began developing green energy. Though only 20% of the current energy mix, roughly 70 GW of renewable capacity has been installed and at least another 40 GW is under construction according to the latest government data. <\/p>\n

With\u00a0around 11,788 megawatts (MW)\u00a0more being added between April 2017 and March 2018, India is now positioned 4th\u00a0globally in wind, and 6thin solar. Additionally, last year the renewable energy sector created 47,000 new jobs while sustaining almost 400,000 more positions, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).<\/p>\n

The sheer pace of India\u2019s adoption of renewables has reduced aggregate installation and production costs by 50% over the last two years\u00a0according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance\u00a0(BNEF), flipping earlier economic projections and torpedoing plans for hundreds of megawatts of new coal power. Though coal still supplied 80% of the economy last year,\u00a0new wind and solar is now 20% cheaper than existing coal-fired generation\u2019s average wholesale power price. Moreover, rising domestic production costs, the doubling of imported coal prices and a crippling delivery shortage continues to plague the industry. Currently new renewable energy is less expensive to build than it costs to run most of the existing coal fired power in the nation\u2014let alone construct new plants.<\/p>\n

Case in point: in June the state owned utility, NTPC, the largest owner and developer of coal plants in India, cancelled its planned 4 GW Pudimadaka \u201cUltra Mega\u201d Power Plant project in the state of Andhra Pradesh. No longer economical,\u00a0according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis\u00a0(IEEFA), since the 2010 build out announcement, India\u2019s coal plant pipeline has shrunk by 547 GW.<\/p>\n

(Continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question for this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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Are we making progress in renewable energy?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Continued from left column)<\/p>\n

To put that into perspective, that figure amounts to almost three times Germany\u2019s total\u00a0installed\u00a0capacity. And while 80 GW of new coal-fired capacity is still technically \u201cprogressing\u201d through myriad approval processes, IEEFA estimates that no more than 10-20 GW might actually see the light of day. \u201cThat means more than 84% of India\u2019s 2010 coal pipeline will have been cancelled when all is said and done,\u201d said Tim Buckley, IEEFA\u2019s Director of Energy Finance Studies, Australasia.<\/p>\n

Moreover, under the nation\u2019s 2018 National Energy Plan (NEP), India\u2019s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has recently proposed closing nearly 50 GW of inefficient and heavily polluting coal capacity by 2027. Retrofitting those that remain open to achieve new compliance standards will cost millions more, forcing operators to reconsider future investments as renewables elbow them out.<\/p>\n

So how will India keep both the existing lights on and enable millions more citizens to power up? The new NEP calls for an incredible 275 GW of total renewable energy capacity by 2027. In June the trajectory for the build-out was increased to no less than 227 GW by 2022. At these rates,\u00a0clean energy is projected by BNEF\u00a0to constitute 75% of total capacity by 2050, essentially inverting the status quo.<\/p>\n

Illustrative of this leap forward, on June 21, India\u2019s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) R.K. Singh announced a 100GW solar tender, with an emphasis on battery storage and domestic solar manufacturing. This announcement follows on the heels of plans for 8-10GW of annual onshore wind installations, plus an ambitious 30GW of offshore wind by 2030. Under the\u00a0Paris Climate agreement, India had already committed to produce 40% of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. Singh has since vowed to have over 55% installed by then.<\/p>\n

While an enormous task, a large portion of the support and financing for this is coming from Japan\u2019s richest man, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who has reportedly told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he will underwrite most of the 100GW of new solar with a US$60-100 billion investment.<\/p>\n

But can this and the overall 275 GW target realistically be met on time? While not sure if the giant solar tender \u201cmakes a lot of sense\u201d, IEEF director Buckley, offered instead that the plan is indeed a \u201cbrilliant statement of intent.\u201d Certainly, by setting the aspirational goal, India has attracted investors and further spurred the development of their domestic manufacturing industry.\u00a0Tulsi Tanti, chairman and managing director of the\u00a0Suzlon\u00a0Group, one of the nation\u2019s leading wind energy suppliers, expects that there will be at least\u00a0two million workers employed\u00a0in the wind energy manufacturing industries by 2022. Suzlon currently commands a 35% share of the market since over 8,500 of their turbines with a cumulative generation capacity of 11,919 MW power it. \u201cIn the next financial year, a minimum of 1 GW more [of wind energy] installation will happen every month,\u201d Tanti said as the nation ramps towards 50-60MW of total wind capacity.<\/p>\n

While coal will continue to constitute India\u2019s baseload energy backbone for the next few decades as a hedge against intermittency, its role will diminish as the grid becomes better integrated, more decentralized and additional battery power comes on line. \u201cWe have missed the first and second industrial revolutions,\u201d Minister\u00a0Singh said recently. \u201cWe caught up with the digital revolution, but we need to lead this revolution towards clean energy and renewable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT .. An article by L. Michael Buchsbaum in Energy Transition: the Global Energiewende It looked as if India\u2019s plan to power up the country using coal would be a disaster for the environment. But renewables changed the game: they currently make up 20% of the energy mix and are growing fast. L. … Continue reading India strides towards clean energy leadership<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,10],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-13303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-asia","category-sustainable","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}