International Energy Agency (IEA) in its latest report has said that capacity for renewable energy in India is expected to more than double by the end of 2022. It also pointed out that this growth would be sufficient to overtake European Union in renewable energy expansion. Besides, it found that wind and solar PV together accounted for more than 90 percent of India's capacity growth as auctions yielded some of the world's lowest prices for both technologies.
The Paris-based agency further highlighted that earlier this year, the solar and wind power tariffs dropped sharply to an all-time low of Rs 2.44 per unit and Rs 3.46 per unit in tariff based competitive bidding conducted by Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). Besides, it said that India's move to address the financial health of its utilities and tackle grid-integration issues drive a more optimistic forecast. It also observed that the renewables will continue to have a strong growth in coming years and will grow by about 1,000 GW by 2022, which equals about half of the current global capacity in coal power, which took 80 years to build.
The report also expects that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022. It noted that three countries - China, India and the United States - will account for two-thirds of global renewable expansion by 2022. It added that total solar PV capacity by then would exceed the combined total power capacities of India and Japan today. As per the recent government data, the country’s renewable energy installed capacity is 58.30 GW. Besides, the government has up-scaled the target of renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by the year 2022 which includes 100 GW from solar, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from bio-power and 5 GW from small hydro-power.