India Misses Renewable Energy Targets In 4th Consecutive Year
India has missed its renewable energy capacity addition target for 2019–2020. This is the fourth shortfall in achievement of targets in as many years.
At the start of financial year 2019–2020, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) had set a target to add 11.8 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. This target was the lowest in four years. Compared to 2018–2019, the capacity addition target was 24% lower, yet India failed to achieve the target. During the period of April 2019 to March 2020, the country managed to add 8.7 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, a shortfall of 26%.
The largest capacity addition achieved in India’s renewable energy sector remains 11.3 gigawatts in 2016–2017.
Solar power had its lowest capacity addition target in four years. Yet, the sector failed to meet the target, falling short by 24%. Solar power capacity addition target for 2019–2020 was set at 8.5 gigawatts, down from 11 gigawatts in 2018–2019. Against this target, only 6.4 gigawatts capacity was added, which is marginally lower than capacity added in previous year (6.5 gigawatts).
Between 2015–2016 and 2019–2020, the cumulative capacity addition target for solar power sector was 42.9 gigawatts. Against this target, only 26.2 gigawatts of capacity was added.
The capacity addition target for the wind energy sector was also set at its lowest in four years. India had aimed to add 4 gigawatts of wind energy capacity each in 2016–2017, 2017–2018, and 2018–2019. However, only 7.5 gigawatts of capacity was added during these years. In 2019-20, the target was set at 3 gigawatts, whereas only 2 gigawatts of capacity was added.
Over the last five years, India had planned to add 17.4 gigawatts of wind energy capacity but managed to add just 13 gigawatts.
In 2019–2020, only two technologies managed to exceed their respective capacity addition targets — small hydro and waste-to-energy. Against a target of 50 megawatts, India added 90 megawatts of small hydro power capacity. Waste-to-energy has a meager target of just 2 megawatts while the actual capacity addition was 9 megawatts.
As of 31 March 2020, India had a solar power capacity of 34.6 gigawatts while it aims to have 100 gigawatts capacity by December 2022. It had 37.6 gigawatts of wind power capacity and aims for 60 gigawatts by December 2022.
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