“Leveraging the Co-Benefits of RE” Report Launched at WSDS 2019

TERI previously coordinated three co-benefits Council meetings to delineate areas of national importance that can be captured using the co-benefits approach.

TERI and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), under the aegis of International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), launched their report “Leveraging the ‘Co-benefits’ of Renewable Energy in India” at the ongoing WSDS 2019.

TERI previously coordinated three co-benefits Council meetings to delineate areas of national importance that can be captured using the co-benefits approach. The “co-benefits” approach seeks to identify and capture the positive externalities arising from climate change mitigation.

The co-benefits council members zeroed in on the following themes: i) gauging the regional impacts of shifting to renewable energy on mortality, quality of life and the improvement in ambient air quality; ii) estimating net jobs created across renewable energy generation value chains, and gauging consequent capacity building and skilling needs evolving in job markets; and iii) making an economic case for electricity access provisioning through off-grid renewable energy solutions versus grid-based electricity.

The Employment study found that renewable energy technologies tend to be more labour intensive than conventional technologies and that the rooftop solar sector, given the small and distributed nature of installations, creates significantly higher job-years per MW than any other technology.  The study found that as the economy shifts from coal-based generation to renewables, the coal-mining sector would be impacted the most. But as Dr. P.C. Maithani (Advisor, MNRE) reiterated, coal will still remain a part of the growth trajectory.

The Energy Access study found that mini-grid consumers pay significantly higher per unit charges; in some cases, in the absence of grid connectivity or poor connectivity, these non-grid connected consumers fall back to using limited lighting services. This systemic failure never allows for capturing latent demand.