India’s commitments at Glasgow

Addressing the Glasgow summit Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a five-point action plan, which he called “Panchamrit” (Five Elixir), to combat climate change. The first component of the Panchamrit targets at raising non-fossil fuel-based energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030 – up 25 percent from the earlier target of 400 GW set by the prime minister. India expects to meet 50 percent of its projected power demand of 1,100 GW in 2030 by increasing the production capacity of solar to 280 GW and wind to 140 GW, with hydropower, nuclear biofuel supplying the remainder. The government has focused its main attention on increasing renewable energy capacity, which is expected to not only reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases relative to fossil fuels and create more employment but also cut oil and gas import bills. A drastic reduction in solar and wind energy prices over the years has made investment renewable energy attractive.

The second action plan aims to meet 50 percent of the country’s energy requirements using renewable energy by 2030. This is also a 25 percent increase on the commitment made by India at the Paris summit as part of its NDC. India claims that it had already met its 2030 target of increasing the non-fossil fuel energy capacity nine years ahead of the due date. In December 2021 India’s installed non-fossil fuel energy capacity was 157.33 GW – 40 percent of the total installed capacity of 392 GW, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. This includes solar power 48.55 GW, Wind 40.03 GW, small hydro 4.83 GW, bio-power 10.63 GW, large hydro 46.51 GW and nuclear 6.78 GW. In 2019, India declared large hydropower plants as renewable energy resources whereas until then only projects smaller than 25 MW were deemed to be renewable. This, of course, was part of the global consensus to include large hydro and nuclear energy projects into low-carbon solutions to combat climate change. With the change in classification, India has added large hydro and nuclear energy projects into the new basket.

Now, India has to gear up for the 500 GW to meet the commitment and go beyond coal and oil. The government has laid out a clear road map for how to achieve the 500 GW target by 2030. This includes scaling up solar energy installed capacity to 280 GW and wind to 140 GW, with remainder from hydro, nuclear and biopower. India’s projected total installed capacity in 2030 would be 1,100 GW, according to the government’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA). Keeping in view the pace at which the renewable energy capacity (including hydro and nuclear) has been growing, the Mission 500 GW is comfortably achievable. Over the last seven years (2014-21) it had risen by 2021. According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, now it is set to grow to 220 GW by end-2022 and projected to reach 400 GW by 2025.