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India to fall short on 2022 renewable targets
INDIA
INDIA has admitted it will no longer reach its 2022 clean energy goal of 175 GW from renew- able sources.
In confirming the missing of its December 2022, pledge, by way of a renewed set of climate goals issued at the United Nations this month, New Delhi laid the blame for the shortcoming at the foot of delays in solar and wind installations.
On paper the government’s amended Nation- ally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the 2015, Paris Agreement now outlines an intent to produce around 50% of all electricity from renewable sources by the end of the decade.
The update to the NDC, however, is a de-facto admission that efforts in the years since Paris, have not met with as much momentum as the administration of Narendra Modi (in power since 2014) initially promised.
The 175 GW goal meanwhile will maintain its initial form with a total of 100 GW to come from solar installations, a further 60 GW from wind powered sources, and the remaining 15 GW from a combination of biomass and hydropower.
Sources in India now indicate authorities across India are pushing efforts to reach 175 GW some time in 2023. However, with a current disparity of over 30% when compared to initial end-of-2022 goals, the nation will struggle to reach 175 GW any time soon according to some sources.
Current figures indicate solar installations as of the end of May this year amounted to almost 58 GW, with wind power generating just over 40.7 GW.
The Secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, in speaking to a national par- liamentary standing committee on the situation in the wind sector said “It is true that our (wind) targetis60GWbythe(endofthe)year2022.As per the current situation, we may not be able to
reach 60 GW. This is not only true for wind, but also for the overall target for Renewable Energy.” India’s devastating exposure to COVID-19 throughout much of 2021, and into 2022, also shouldered some of the blame for failing to meet the goal according to a report released by the
standing committee.
“The delays are due to COVID and the
impact of solar supply chain disruptions in China. An extension of five and a half months is given for the Scheduled Commissioning and an additional extension on a case-to-case basis is being considered for some projects as a special dispensation to offset the effect of COVID. As a result, it will take us some more time to reach 175 GW.”
In subsequent comments attributed to the standing committee, across India it is possible to install over 200 GW of wind power.
Nationwide to date, however, the total figure for wind installations has struggled to reached just 20% of that goal.
Long-term too, the slow rate of increase in wind installations throughout India was noted. At the end of March, 2014, two months before Prime Minister Modi came to power, total capacity stood at 21 GW.
Eight years later that figure has increased by just 93%.
In comparison, the multi-year solar boom across India, even with supply and well pub- licized infrastructure problems, has seen an increase of over 2,000% of new installations across the same time-frame.
The result in the eyes of some in government has been to imply that solar has been given prior- ity over wind installations; a factor only serving to exacerbate domestic wind industry concerns. ™
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