At least 68 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy projects in India are currently under construction and another 30 GW are at various stages of tenders, Union Minister for Power and Renewable Energy RK Singh told Moneycontrol.
"We have about 80 GW of renewable projects under construction. Again, out of that you take out nuclear projects, that is about 12 GW. So, you have about 68 GW under construction (excluding nuclear projects). Also, we have another 30 GW under different stages of bids," Singh said in an exclusive interaction with Moneycontrol on March 25.
India set an ambitious target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by the year 2022, which included 100 GW from solar, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from bio-power and 5 GW from small hydro-power. However, till February-end, India's renewable energy capacity was 168.96 GW, of which, 64.38 GW is solar power capacity, 51.79 GW hydro, 42.02 GW wind and 10.77 GW bio power.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy also highlighted this miss in its latest report which was released in the ongoing Budget session last week. "Keeping in view the fact that renewable energy installed capacity has increased by more than 236 percent since 2014, this is indeed a commendable achievement. However, it should also be mentioned that whatever shortfall has occurred in achievement of the target that is because of low installation of solar roof-tops and wind energy projects," the committee said in its report.
Singh, however, was confident about the target being met in time. In the long run, India has set a target of 500 GW of installed renewable capacity by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2070.
"We are not missing the target, by the way. In fact, the target was 40 percent from non-fossils by 2030. We achieved it nine years in advance. I mean, come on. As for our internal target of 175 GW by 2022, today, our serviced capacity is 178 GW from non-fossil fuels. Out of that, if you take out nuclear, which is about 6,800 MW (6.8 GW), that makes it about 170 GW of established renewable capacity," the minister said.
Singh said the 68 GW under-construction renewable projects would have fructified if Covid-19 had not hit for two years. "But despite that, we're already at 170 GW. With the 68 GW under construction, we are way ahead of time," he said.
As per current laws set by the ministry of power, distribution companies, open-access consumers and those with captive power are mandated to have about 22 percent of their total electricity sourced from renewables.
The minister said India has emerged as the most attractive destination for investment in renewable energy (RE) in the world, which is why the country's RE capacity addition was the fastest in the world.
However, it slowed down over the past two-three years because of India's Make in India pledge which added to the already affected supply-chain issues. Now India is setting up its own manufacturing capacity of solar right from polysilicon to modules. The government already came up with the first tranche of the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme that resulted in bids for about 8700 megawatts (MW) of manufacturing capacity. The second tranche of PLI has led to bids of 28,000 MW.
