Over 500GW Generation By 2030 From Renewable Energy: RK Singh

The Union Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister RK Singh, on July 27 said the renewable energy capacity will reach over 500GW by 2030.

In his message at the launch of a report of The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), Singh said, “By 2030, the total capacity for power production would be about 820GW. Out of that, more than 500GW will be non-fossil.”

India has come long a way since the time that the country had announced in 2021 an ambitious plan of installing 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity in 2022. Since then, the targets have only become bolder and stronger. India is now eyeing a goal of 450 GW of renewable energy by 2030, which includes 280 GW of solar power and 140 GW of wind power. However, achieving this target brings with it its own set of challenges ranging from land availability and environment impacts to policy challenges and finance.

Pointing out that India has already started adding storage capacity to renewable energy, the minister said the government has come out with one of the largest bids on storage and is trying to bring down the storage cost by adding volume.

He also laid stress on the country’s commitment to energy transition targets though it has one of the lowest per capita emissions.

TERI recently drew up a roadmap to chart the viable pathways to accomplish the aggressive decarbonisation targets.

Other than recommending policies along with technological interventions to reach the goals as envisioned at the end of the decade, TERI’s has also called for state leadership in the establishment of pumped storage plants and feed-in-tariff for solar generation.

Vibha Dhawan, Director General, TERI, said in the statement, “While India has the right policy regime in place, we need to adopt new energy storage solutions and technologies which bring stability and flexibility to the grid. We need collaborations for investing in research and development of new technologies.”