TERI Yearender 2020

At the 2019 UN Climate Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the doubling of India’s renewable energy target to 450 GW by 2030. However, with the slowing down of the economy in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic, the question remains – how will we get there?

We attempted to provide answers through our report ‘Renewable Power Pathways: Modelling the Integration of Wind and Solar in India by 2030’. Drawing from state-of-the-art modelling exercises, the report concluded that India can achieve generation shares of variable renewables greater than 30% by 2030 and over 45% if we include hydro and nuclear power. This can be achieved at no extra system cost provided that a comprehensive portfolio of options is deployed in order to increase the flexibility of the power system.

All our demand growth will be met by renewable energy… There have been innovative bids for meeting peak demand and for round the clock electricity through RE, and storage, all of which will bring prices down.

Shri RK Singh

Honourable Minister of State (IC) of Power and Renewable Energy, and Minister of State, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India.

However, it was also clear that the economic shock of Covid-19 will not leave the electricity sector untouched. TERI’s forecasts for mid-term power demand, in its report ‘Bending the Curve’, suggest that electricity demand for 2025 in India’s 10 largest electricity consuming states could be 5-15% lower than it would have been without the Covid-19 shock. Hence, despite the renewables targets and opportunities, policy makers, generators, DISCOMS, and investors need to prepare for a future in which the shock to electricity demand growth persists

Electricity demand would possibly be between 7 and 17% less than what was expected till 2025, depending on the kind of economic recovery that takes place.

Dr Ajay Mathur

Director General, TERI

The ‘Renewable Power Pathways’ report also underlined the importance of battery storage systems to integrate variable renewables in the Indian power system. It states that by 2030, India would require 120 GWh of battery storage. TERI also initiated a rare tender for installation and maintenance of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to demonstrate that it is cost effective for DISCOMS to add batteries instead of adding transformer capacity in many instances, and for housing societies to use solar-cum-battery systems for electricity supply instead of diesel generator sets. This tender was won by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), one of the largest engineering and manufacturing companies of its kind in India.

Looking for newer sources of generating renewable energy, especially solar power, TERI looked beyond land and found that India's reservoirs have 18,000 sq km of area that have the potential to generate 280 GW of electricity through floating solar photovoltaic (PV) plants.

Once generated through renewable sources, electricity has the potential to decarbonise other sectors too. This includes shifting mobility away from fossil fuels through electrification, with public transport taking the lead. The IEA’s flagship report – Global Electric Vehicle Outlook (GEVO) 2020 – featured a case study prepared by TERI on the success of Kolkata’s e-buses fleet.