RENEWABLES
Background
The drive to reduce India’s carbon emissions and take an ambitious step to move toward a clean energy future started in 2010 with the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). The Mission had set up an ambitious target of deploying 20 GW of grid connected solar power by 2022.
Further, to promote a clean energy ecosystem in the country and to scale up renewable energy in the country, the government announced the world’s largest renewable energy capacity target of 175 GW by 2022. This target if further broke down into 60 GW of wind, 10 GW of small hydro and 5 GW of biomass-based power projects. In addition, India signed the Paris Agreement at the Conference of Parties (CoP) 21 in December, 2015 and committed to reducing 30-35 per cent of its GHG emissions by 2030.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has been successfully working towards these targets. The Government has achieved the highest record of wind capacity addition of over 5400 MW in 2016-17 against the target of 4000 MW which has surpassed the previous higher capacity addition of 3.423 MW achieved in 2015-16. The solar capacity has also increased 370 per cent in the last three years from 2.6 GW to around 12.5GW. India has also installed 1.1 lakh solar pumps between the years 2014 to 2017 as compared to 11,600 from 1991 to 2014.
To ensure that the target is achieved in the given time frame, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in February 2017 approved the enhancement of capacity from 20 GW to 40 GW of the Scheme for Development of Solar Parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects. Also to ensure that renewable energy is affordable and attractive for consumers; 2016-17 saw the lowest tariffs in both solar (Rs 2.44) and wind (Rs 3.46) energy. In a ground-breaking development, 2016-17 marks the first year when net capacity addition of renewable energy was higher than that conventional energy.
CII’s Work
Driving the government’s agenda forward, the CII National Committee on Renewables has been working closely with the Government of India to prioritise policy reforms, mobilise investment, boost manufacturing, and promote sustainable development goals to achieve the ambitious RE target.
Over the past three years, sustained and proactive stakeholder engagement has led to significant progress: generation capacity has risen; transparent competitive bidding for solar and wind has seen renewable power prices drop to historic lows and reach grid parity; the biofuels blending mandate is getting back on track with restructured pricing and improved supply of feedstock; agricultural and municipal waste-to-energy is being included in civic planning, and in May 2017, India became the second most favourable destination for renewable energy in the world.
This year, with the focus of the Government increasing in the area of solar, wind and bio-energy, CII has decided to take up issues separately by forming two separate committees on solar and wind & bio-energy.
The CII National Committee on Solar Energy will be focussing on reforming the distribution sector; rationalising tariffs; create a roadmap for deployment of solar rooftop in states; boost solar manufacturing and promote east of doing business.
The CII National Committee on Wind & Bio- Energy will be focusing on issues with regards to decreasing the cost of transportation of wind products domestically as well as internationally; ensure states comply with their renewable purchase obligations (RPOs) and that there is an increase in bidding to about 6000 to 8000 MW / year in both state and central bids. With regards to the bio-energy, the committee will focus on advocating for greater use of biofuels in commercial and private transportation to achieve the Ministry’s target of going beyond 5 per cent blending; incentivize 2G Ethanol production technologies and chemicals; and focus on policies, processes, financing and marketing of initiatives to convert agricultural and municipal waste into bio fuels/ bio gas and other viable / useful by-products.
International Solar Alliance
In an effort to further contribute to lowering its GHG emission globally; India spearheaded the launch of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) on 30 November 2015 at Paris, France. The ISA was jointly launched by the Prime Minister of India and the President of France on the side-lines of the 21st Conference of Parties at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ISA has been envisioned as a specialized platform to contribute towards the common goal of increasing utilization and promotion of solar energy and solar applications in its 123 member countries from the solar-rich zone between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The Paris declaration on International Solar Alliance states that the countries share the collective ambition to undertake innovative and concerted efforts for reducing the cost of finance and cost of technology for immediate deployment of competitive solar generation.
The ISA secretariat has been established in India and Mr Upendra Tripathy, Former Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has been elected as its Interim Director General.
CII will partner with the Government of India on the national initiative to establish the ISA as a global agency for development and deployment of solar energy in member nations, including executing its plans to organising national/international outreach programmes. CII is also looking forward to work with ISA on a feasibility study on how to design and operationalize a model to attract investment with the aim to achieve rapid scaling up of solar power investment in the member nations as well as globally.
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RENEWABLES
Background
The drive to reduce India’s carbon emissions and take an ambitious step to move toward a clean energy future started in 2010 with the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). The Mission had set up an ambitious target of deploying 20 GW of grid connected solar power by 2022.
Further, to promote a clean energy ecosystem in the country and to scale up renewable energy in the country, the government announced the world’s largest ...