Renewable Energy Outlook in India

OVERVIEW

In recent times, the issue of climate change has come to the fore-front of thought across the world, and this in turn has fostered a renewed interest in renewable sources of energy. In addition, the recent volatility witnessed in the prices of fossil fuels, such as crude oil and gas, has meant that industry players and the Government have decided to take a more serious look at renewables in order to lower their dependence on more conventional fuels.

India has emerged in the forefront of some forms of renewable energy, with approximately 13,500-14000 MW of installed capacity available from renewable sources, of which wind comprises approximately 9700 MW .

However, the country has a much higher potential of approximately 45,000 MW of wind power, 18,000 MW from biomass-based sources and close to 15,000 MW of small hydro resources (defined as plants each of less than 25 MW capacity) as the table indicates. In addition, given the country’s latitudinal location, the country receives large amounts of sunshine, for around 250-300 days per year, meaning that the country can potentially meet its entire power requirement upto the year 2022 through solar power alone !

In fact, the possibility of supplementing conventional sources of energy with renewables has a larger scope in countries such as India, which already suffer from massive energy shortages. The peak shortage for power has been estimated to be as high as 13-14 percent in the country and large areas go without power for long period or face load-shedding for as much as 16 hours a day, particularly in the summer months.

The Planning Commission estimates that power generation capacity must increase to nearly 800,000 MW in India in 2031-32 from the current capacity of around 160,000 MW (inclusive of all captive plants). An increasing percentage of this will have to come from renewables.

This is even more relevant when one considers the fact that currently, thermal energy comprises over 60 percent of the total power generating capacity in the country. Even in the XIth Plan period, almost 60,000 MW of the scheduled capacity addition of approximately 77,700 MW is scheduled to be derived from thermal plants .

Indeed, a few tentative steps have been taken by the Government in this regard. In order to boost renewable energy generation, the Electricity Act 2003 has asked the state utilities to purchase a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources-called as Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO). Although many states have indeed specified varying