Climate finance key to energy transition in India, says report
India must increase wind and solar generation five to six times by 2030 to meet climate goals, requiring significant investment and international support.
India’s wind and solar generation needs to grow five to six times by 2030 to align with the 1.5 degrees C goal, reaching 900-1200 terrawatt hour (TWh) of wind and solar energy, a new report has projected.
At the current pace of roll-out, India would fall short of the needed capacity in 2030 to meet the 1.5 degrees C alignment, with the shortfall being around 140 GW of solar and 70 GW of wind. The 1.5 degrees C refers to one of the targets of the Paris agreement on climate, keeping global warming to under 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
India will require large-scale investment to help phase down coal power, accelerate renewables deployment, and drive grid expansion, and international support will be key in supporting the energy transition with climate finance, the report by Germany based Climate Analytics and New Climate Institute said .
India’s power sector remains heavily dependent on coal, which provided 75% of electricity generation in 2023.
At COP28,the climate conference in Dubai last year, governments agreed to triple global renewable capacity by 2030 globally. The report highlights the potential implications of this COP28 decision at the national level including for India.
“High-income countries will need to provide substantially increased climate finance to support emissions reduction abroad, in line with their ‘fair share of climate action. Achieving these benchmarks in lower-income countries is therefore a global responsibility, rather than a domestic responsibility,” the report states.
It also projects that if India is to align with 1.5 degreeS C goal, fossil fuels must exit the Indian power sector before 2045. Fossil fuel generation must fall by 20- 44% between 2022 and 2030, it adds.
India’s current nationally determined contribution (NDC) is to cut the emissions intensity by 45% below 2005 levels in 2030. India has also pledged to become net zero by 2070.
The country’s current renewable targets are to reach 319 GW of solar and 110 GW of wind by 2030, according to the Indian National Electricity Plan 2022. Under current policies and market conditions, the International Energy Agency estimates that solar capacity will reach 238 GW in 2028, up from 83 GW of solar in 2022. Wind capacity is projected to reach 69 GW in 2028, up from 42 GW in 2022.
Importantly, the report has underlined that developing countries cannot achieve their renewable energy goals without action on climate finance, which is central to driving the clean energy transition.
HT reported on September 17 that there is no consensus on the most critical COP29 (the coming climate conference in Baku) negotiated agenda yet which is agreeing on a fair and ambitious New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG).
The new financial goal is to be set from the floor of $100 billion (a year) for the post-2025 period. Sources said the two major outstanding issues on NCQG are the quantum of the fund and the list of “contributors.”
Developed countries are pushing to expand the contributor base to the fund by inducting emerging economies (not necessarily historical polluters) in the list of contributors. “They are not ready to budge,” an official said on Monday.
Developing countries are clear that they will stick to the provisions of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which state that finance must flow from developed to developing countries. Developing countries expect contributions in the trillions annually from developed nations, for climate change mitigation efforts as defined in their nationally determined contributions.
Apart from climate finance needed for transition, land conflicts, lack of access to land to set up solar and hydro projects, and population density are likely to pose a serious challenge to India’s target of achieving net zero emissions by 2070, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water flagged in a study earlier this month. While the country has a renewable energy (RE) potential of over 24,000 GW, even reaching the 7,000 GW required to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070 will require a holistic approach to address challenges such as land access, climate risks, land conflicts, and population density, that study added.