India Needs To Increase Renewable Deployments: IEA Report

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A latest report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that countries like India, European Union and the United States needed to accelerate the pace of deployment of renewable energy. The global energy think tank said that the acceleration is needed for India to achieve it target of ensuring 500 GW of capacities from non-fossil sources. 

The report was specially crafted to review the preparedness of the countries towards achieving their renewable targets and the broader target of tripling renewable energy capacities. This comes close on the hills of the next Conference of Parties (COP) and the submissions of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by the countries. 

“To meet national ambitions and spread progress more widely, the pace of deployment needs to accelerate in most regions and major countries – including the European Union, the United States and India. Major scaling up of deployment is also needed in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa,” the IEA report said. 

India is one of the key players in the world when it comes to renewable power. The IEA report said that nearly 30 countries aim to increase their renewable capacity by two to three times by 2030, accounting for almost three-quarters of global ambition, led by China, the United States, India, Germany and Spain.

The IEA report said that most of the total global ambition for 2030 comes from countries that wish to at least double their installed renewable energy capacity. “In fact, 28 countries aim to increase their renewable capacity two to three times by 2030, totalling 5 707 GW or 72% of the global total. China makes up more than half of this sum, followed by the United States, India, Germany and Spain,” it said.

The report said that in the Asia Pacific region (excluding China), India leads the chart. “Current plans indicate that India leads regional renewable capacity ambitions, accounting for almost half of 2023-2030 additions. It aims to meet the majority of its growing electricity demand with renewable energy and achieve 500 GW of nonfossil fuel capacity (including nuclear) by 2030, which translates into about 485 GW of renewables (293 GW of solar PV, 100 GW of wind, 78 GW of hydro and 15 GW of bioenergy),” the report said. 

The IEA report said that India, which already had the third largest national renewable energy market in 2018-2022, is planning to further increase its installed renewable capacity by a factor of 2.6 by 2030. 

“However, expanding an already-large market can be a difficult task with new hurdles to overcome, such as shrinking land availability and increasingly complex system integration challenges…” the report said.