Potential of India’s Renewable Energy Resources

The capability of renewable energy in India – and the price tag to acknowledge– was highlighted recently by boards of energy and financing specialists.

‘The potential is colossal – the quantity of GWs is brain boggling,’ said Amit De, Sr. Strategies SkyPower Global.

‘SkyPower has resolved to manufacture 18GW of solar projects in India by 2022’, De said at the panel discussion at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.

‘We see India as a very competitive market, but it has fantastic opportunities,’ De said. ‘There are challenges in terms of the grid, some states are not so easy to do business and it would be nice if regulation was more streamlined, but renewables will change the face of power generation in India.’

‘There was exponential growth in India for renewables’, Pranav Mehta, chairman of the National Solar Energy Federation of India said. He added that, ‘The growth would be built on “four pillars”.’

‘Firstly, volume – if the volume is there the business will come; second, spread – spreading renewables throughout the country is needed; third is technology and fourth is infrastructure,’ Mehta said.

‘India had gone from zero renewables to 5,000 MW in only a couple of years and “we are going to have 20-times as much,’ he added.

Ashish Sethia of Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that, ‘For India to fulfill its renewable energy targets, $20 billion of capital should come into the market each year.

‘A year ago it was $11billion, so we have to twofold that number,’ Sethia said.

He included that India was, ‘The only major economy in the world that has power market growth of between 4 and 5 percent, not even China could rival that,’ he added.

Vikas Dawra, MD of Yes Bank focused on the criticalness of a renewables rollout, ‘33% of Indians doesn’t have access to the grid – that is 330 million people.’