India’s accelerating moves to a clean energy economy has received inadequate attention at this blog (and, well, in much of the world). From leveraging plunging solar prices to enable a viable path to eliminating (the lowest level of) energy poverty to trains with solar panels for powering auxiliary demands to significant reductions in projected coal demands to …, India’s clean energy economy is booming and impressive. Shifting India’s future from a coal-dominated power system to solar, wind, batteries, and other clean energy options is a critical part of reducing global emissions (or, well, avoiding continued growth), for reducing Indian poverty, and opening the doors for ever-growing prosperity in the South Continent. India’s achievements and plans merit attention
Within this, the Indian government recently announced an impressive plan to auction 40 gigawatts of solar (30) and wind (10) projects every year for ten years. This will add 400 gigawatts of clean energy generation capacity. For context, India currently has about 70 gw of clean energy capacity deployed, of which 22 is solar and 34 is wind. While the auctioning won’t be fully deployed by then, this plan would put Indian at about 350 GW and 140 GW of wind by 2030 and providing the majority of the forecasting 860GW of generating capacity.
This is an impressive statement … consider the confidence that the Indian government has in renewable energy: plans for a more than ten-fold increase in the coming ten years.
However, something to consider … is this plan’s structure conceived correctly?
Ten years of auctioning the same amount of solar and wind every year … hmmm …
- To achieve 40 GW of annual capacity installation could (will) require building up additional engineering, production, installation, etc capacity …
- Planning on the same amount of installation assumes rapidly building up capacity than artificially flattening that growth to a stable position.
With what is known about solar and wind price (and learning) curves, this seems — on the surface — a plan that will change significantly just in the coming few years: with built up capacity and plunging prices, India almost certainly will be adding additional wind and solar projects to this plan (and adding significant storage (battery) into the plans as well). Thus, the impressive plan for bidding out 400 gw of solar and wind seems almost certain to be overtaken by reality and become even more impressive in the years to come.
India Power Generation: In the first 2 months of current fiscal, no new #coal, #gas or #diesel based capacity was added. Of the 746 MW that has been added, #solar accounts for 91%.https://t.co/tjANR3afw0
— Coal Numerical (@CoalNumerical) July 5, 2018