As the deadline of December 2022 for attaining 175 GW of renewable power (RE) capacity draws closer, it is becoming clear that practically nothing brief of an exponential jump in capacity addition would permit India to attain the target. With an installed RE capacity of 93 GW as of March 2021, there remains a deficit of 83 GW to be bridged, that also in merely 21 months. This has created the parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy ask the Centre to formulate approaches that speed up capacity installation.
Several components have contributed to capacity addition lacking the expected momentum, although in the final one year it is Covid-19 that has impacted project auctions, awards, and commissioning, affecting projects that had been currently facing financial pressures. As an emergency measure against the pandemic, a blanket extension of six months was granted to all projects that necessary imports or had been to be commissioned. Anuja Tiwari, Partner, Infrastructure and Energy at AZB & Partners, says, “for a host of reasons it appears we will be on the lower side of 75% of the 175-GW target”.
Kameswara Rao, Lead, Energy practice at PwC, differs, saying “we should finish fairly close to the target, possibly falling short by about 15%. This itself is an achievement given delays in project implementation due to the pandemic. It is time to move away from targets and tariffs. Instead, the focus must be on measures needed for renewable energy to meet consumer demand.”
Since the launch of the National Solar Mission strategy in 2010, 39 GW of solar power capacity has been installed, as against the target of one hundred GW. Another 36 GW of solar power projects are below implementation, the Standing Committee on Energy report mentioned. The wind segment saw an addition of 37.7 GW in the final decade, as against the targeted capacity of 60 GW.
But it is rooftop solar that has observed the slowest development, with capacity addition standing at a meagre 4.4 GW as of March 2021. Merely 430 MW of rooftop installations materialised in 2020, as against the year’s target of 3,000 MW. Lack of awareness has been cited as the principal cause for the slow development of the rooftop sub-sector. The parliamentary committee has suggested that the Union government really should extensively promote the rewards of rooftop solar and the incentives it is providing for the very same. While there really should be a single-window program at the district-level to facilitate rooftop installations, a greater subsidy for clients in the decrease revenue group would go a lengthy way in growing its adoption, it has mentioned.
The lack of expected momentum in the RE sector is also evident from the progress created on the green power corridors, which had been launched in 2015-16 for evacuation of renewable power from remote places. The evacuation infrastructure has observed an addition of 7,365 circuit kilometres (ckms), as against the target of 9,700 ckms, whilst substation capacity of 9,700 million volt ampere (MVA) is way beneath the targeted 22,600 MVA.
Shubhranshu Patnaik, Partner at Deloitte, says the pace of development is partly attributable to Covid. Also, because the solar park scheme got exhausted, auctions have observed bidders taking a view on the accessible transmission interconnection and corridors. “Delay in meeting the target is not an overwhelming concern for now as demand too was affected by Covid and will likely lag 2022 projections. With renewables being the primary means of generation capacity addition in the country, growth in this segment is inevitable. The long term target is already being pegged at 450 GW by 2030, which seems achievable,” he says.