India's Renewable Energy Capacity Hits 200 GW Milestone, Accounts for 46.3%

26 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by rustoo
(ndtvprofit.com)

20 Comments

chmod775

2 hours ago

That's a surprisingly small total capacity for a country of one billion. China has almost 8x India's total capacity, and 5x India's renewable capacity.

What is that going to look like as the country develops further? Will low carbon continue to grow, or will they be forced to reach for easier alternatives to scale quickly?

geodel

2 hours ago

I think there was this report from IMF or something about middle income trap. It says once India reaches middle income level in next 10 yrs or so it will likely to stay there for next 75 years.

So to your point they can develop little further but not too much. Growth will be self-limiting very soon.

Economic growth will be far more energy intensive then we had so far in last 3 decades. A sign of this we saw last year as thousands of A/Cs were exploding because they couldn't operate in extreme heat conditions in northern India.

alephnerd

an hour ago

> middle income level

Upper Middle Income (roughly where China is today). India is already middle income.

Plus China is included in that WB list of future middle income trap members.

> So to your point they can develop little further but not too much. Growth will be self-limiting very soon.

That underestimates nominal capacity.

India today has a similar dynamic to that China had in the 2000s, and within 15-20 years will slow down just like China has in the present.

Furthermore, the financing situation has changed due to the banking stability and FDI reforms in 2016-18, which has helped attract Energy financing into India [0], especially from sovereign funds in the Gulf States and Singapore that missed out on a significant portion of China's boom in the 2000s.

India's economy is basically China-15yrs because Deng Xiaoping's reforms to devolve economic planning to provinces in 1979-80 didn't happen in India until the 1993-95.

[0] - https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BNEF-Financing...

alephnerd

an hour ago

> What is that going to look like as the country develops further? Will low carbon continue to grow, or will they be forced to reach for easier alternatives to scale quickly?

Renewables are getting a MASSIVE push from the Indian government as it's dual use and helps upskill Indian manufacturing, and more critically a lot of capital (foreign and domestic) is being reallocated towards renewable capacity building.

That said, coal consumption will continue to expand for the foreseeable future.

There's a good overview by Bloomberg (their Investment team, not the loss leading news team) into this [0]

India and China view renewable energy from an "Energy Security" perspective, not a "Climate Change" perspective.

[0] - https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BNEF-Financing...

atonse

3 hours ago

I keep seeing more and more stories like this, like how the UK recently closed down its last coal plant. Or how MS and Google are investing in committing to buy nuclear because of their thirst for energy to feed the great AI in the Sky™. Surely having buyers will accelerate the development of some of these nuclear technologies.

Are these all cause for optimism, that we are making good progress towards renewable energy?

toomuchtodo

3 hours ago

> Are these all cause for optimism, that we are making good progress towards renewable energy?

Yes (recalibrate from renewables to "low carbon" though, which is renewables + nuclear + hydro + geothermal + pumped & battery storage + transmission). The US, China, and India are the top 3 carbon emitters as it relates to electrical generation, and all three are rapidly pushing fossil fuels for electricity out of the mix. This is not to say we have succeeded, only that we are on a potentially successful decarbonization trajectory. We should still treat the situation as a war time effort from a scaling perspective. Pull the hockey stick vertical. Citations in my previous comments below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41841037

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41603038

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41602799

Follow along at https://app.electricitymap.org/map?wind=false&solar=false (no affiliation)

Edit: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/India-Pla... (“India Plans $109 Billion of Grid Investments to Boost Renewables”)

> India aims to have 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity installed by 2030 and more than 600 GW by 2032, according to the National Electricity Plan.

bryanlarsen

2 hours ago

I wouldn't read too much into the Google & Microsoft nuclear commitment. They're can't lose deals. If it succeeds, Google & Microsoft get clean power at a reasonable price. If it fails they're not out any money or anything but they still have benefitted from the publicity.

What would be significant would be a true investment, an equity stake for money where they lose money if the project fails or goes significantly over budget.

melling

2 hours ago

Absolutely not. No way we make Net Zero by 2050.

People need to stop reading feel good stories and look at the numbers globally.

Update:

Global CO2 emissions increase almost every year

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...

And for some reason, people think we’re only trying to reduce emissions in the grid. It’s a much bigger problem than electricity.

ben_w

2 hours ago

Currently, PV alone has a nameplate capacity about equal to average total global demand for electricity.

The capacity factor is 10%*, which is why it's not already "done", but even with the assumption of zero increase in the annual production of PV, you get to 62%* of current electrical demand from just PV by 2050.

But it has also demonstrated an average of 26% per year growth since about 2016 (higher before that), which means it's not unreasonable to expect us to reach that point by the early 2030s, quickly followed by all the other things we use energy for.

Wind is also growing, and has a better capacity factor.

The hard part about really reaching net zero is the long tail of small things, as even the CO2 emissions from the degradation of grassland(!) are on the borderline of being unsustainable, and that's 0.1% of global emissions. Or in country terms, getting absolutely everything sorted everywhere except North Korea still isn't good enough.

But the power? That's basically fine.

* Edit: I was being pessimistic, it's improved to 14% and this year is estimated to be 560 GW newly installed nameplate capacity, which means 98% of current demand can be supplied just by PV by 2050 even with no growth, assuming 25 year average lifespan so we can also ignore all currently installed panels.

bryanlarsen

2 hours ago

Net Zero by 2050 is a reduction of 4% per annum. 2024 is projected to be almost 3%.

Seems not an unreasonable optimistic target?

atonse

2 hours ago

What would you like to see happen instead?

dotnet00

2 hours ago

The progress isn't perfect, so we better throw it all out.

alephnerd

3 hours ago

I wouldn't count nuclear as a "renewable" (excluding fast breeder reactors).

That said, renewable energy is becoming more prominent at the expense of oil and gas.

Sadly, coal is also becoming more prominent, because both China and India view renewables from a "energy security" lens, not a "climate change" lens as is seen from rising usage of coal in both China [0] and India [1].

This is because unlike the US, China and India have strategic (Malacca Strait, Strait of Hormuz) and financial (balance of payments) reasons to minimize Oil and Gas usage, which tends to be sourced from the Middle East, Russia, and ASEAN.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-coal-use-...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-coal-fire...

bryanlarsen

2 hours ago

I don't know about India, but China's capacity factor is falling at about the same rate that they're building plants. They're only running their coal plants when the sun doesn't shine. Coal isn't a great peaking source, but as you said energy security is what's important to them.

Luckily for the environment, batteries became cheaper than coal for peaking within the last year or two, and China is starting to really ramp up battery grid storage which should displace their coal usage.

alephnerd

2 hours ago

The issue is heavy industry in both China and India.

Expanding battery capacity helps, but it's a relative drop in the bucket compared to the needs for heavy industry, which used 5,700tWH/yr in China in 2022, and needs to be continuous.

And given that Coal is US$1-1.50/kg, heavy industry will continue to use that because it is cheap and available.

Battery Grid Storage at heavy industry scale is best case still a decade away in China, which is too late from an ecological perspective.

This is because assuming China was able to mass produce Sanborn sized battery grid storage systems (875MW), that's still 6,500,000 to be built across China just to meet 2022's heavy industry requirements alone.

And India's GDP is expected to grow at 6-9% for the foreseeable future, so there will be a similar expansion in heavy industry in India as well.

bryanlarsen

an hour ago

> 5,700tWH/yr

IOW 650 GW average. Which would be 743 Sanborns. China could churn that out in a couple of years. Your math is out by a factor of 365*24.

> And given that Coal is US$1-1.50/kg, heavy industry will continue to use that because it is cheap and available.

I think your numbers must be off, because that's crazy expensive. It takes over a pound of coal to generate a kWh of electricity, so that's over 50 cents per kWh, 100X as expensive as solar.

alephnerd

an hour ago

The $1-1.50/kg includes the capex for infra and land (eg. a coal plant, or a solar array).

Alternative energy sources are not cost effective until they hit the $1.50/kg limit.

Solar has hit that in the mid-2010s, but land acquisition remains a major blocker in both China and India.

> China could churn that out in a couple of years.

"Could" is carrying a lot of the weight in this sentence.

China hasn't fully built and commissioned a Sanborn sized battery grid project yet (but will in the next 1-2 years). It will still take at least a decade to roll out countrywide, and within a decade, China's secondary industry will have grown beyond the size that it is today.

Just having capacity alone doesn't equal a battery grid overnight.

A significant portion of that battery capacity is devoted to the automotive industry as well as exports, plus financing remains a potential blocker, as battery grid projects tend to be public-private projects initiated by provinces within China.

Furthermore, if financing and batteries are already allocated, it still takes time to build out and commission a battery grid.

Plus this ignores India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and plenty of other countries rapidly building out heavy industry capacity.

bryanlarsen

an hour ago

> "Could" is carrying a lot of the weight in this sentence.

No it's not. China will have the capacity to produce > 2500 Sanborns worth of batteries in 2025 alone.

pydry

3 hours ago

91 GW solar

47 GW wind

51 GW hydro

11 GW biomass

8 GW nuclear

user

2 hours ago

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