November 4, 2021
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made international headlines at this week’s Cop26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, by committing his country to getting half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, and achieving net zero emissions by 2070.
The ambitious plans were eagerly awaited and widely welcomed, as India is already the third-largest carbon emitter in the world, and its population, currently 1.3 billion, is set to soon overtake China’s. The greening of the country’s rapidly growing demand for energy is therefore crucial to any attempts to control global carbon emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), India will have to add power capacity equivalent to Europe’s within the next 20 years to meet the needs of its increasing population and rapidly-industrialising economy, while also addressing the rampant air pollution in its cities.
The answer, it appears, is solar energy. According to Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, the development of the country’s solar sector has progressed far ahead of expectations, such that the original target of 175GW extra capacity by 2030 was instead on course to be achieved by 2022. The target for renewable energy, most of which solar power, has since therefore been revised to 500GW, as announced in Modi’s speech.
The rapid increase in solar power generation underpins India’s target of producing more renewable energy by 2030 than the entire current capacity of the national grid. The centrepiece of the country’s solar power revolution is the “Desert State” of Rajasthan, home of the vast Bhadla Park solar complex, which occupies an area the size of San Marino. Rajasthan sees 325 days of sun a year, and is very sparsely populated, making it ideal for the development of solar energy farms with minimal impact on local communities. Bhadla Park is home to around 10 million solar panels, which are maintained primarily by robots with just a few hundred human staff. State authorities are offering incentives for other renewable energy businesses to join in. “It will be a different Rajasthan. It will be the Solar State,” said Subodh Agarwal, Rajasthan’s Chief Secretary for Energy.
However, there is a long way to go to achieve Modi’s ambitious targets. Despite a five-fold increase in the last 10 years, solar power currently accounts for just 4% of electricity generation in India, and the government still provides substantial support to the coal industry, which accounts for 70%. The IEA previously estimated that solar and coal power would converge at around 30% of Indian power generation in around 2040.
For 50% to come from renewable sources will require strong and sustained growth in the sector, but significant renewable energy investments announced recently by Asia’s two richest men, Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries) and Gautam Adani (the Adani group), are a promising start. Modi is also planning a renewables site in his home state, Gujarat, roughly the size of Singapore. Other key objectives for the sector include replacing India’s reliance on imported solar panels from China, which currently account for 80% of India’s solar array, and substantial public investment is needed to overcome energy storage shortages and link solar power generation sites to the grid over India’s vast distances.
At Cop26, Modi made it clear to the other world leaders present that India expected assistance from rich countries to fund these changes. “India expects developed countries to provide climate finance of $1 trillion at the earliest. Today it is necessary that as we track the progress made in climate mitigation, we should also track climate finance,” he said.
But India’s solar ambitions are not just limited to the domestic market. At the Cop26 conference, Modi and his British counterpart Boris Johnson announced plans for the “Green Grid Initiative: One Sun, One World, One Grid” (GGI-OSOWOG), a global network of interconnected solar power plants intended to supply the whole world with solar power 24 hours a day. The plan was first proposed by Modi in 2018 at the first assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), of which India currently holds the presidency, and is supported by over 80 countries.
GGI-OSOWOG envisages uniting governments, regulators, financiers, institutions, companies, legislators and researchers to establish “new transmission lines crossing frontiers and connecting different time zones, creating a global ecosystem of interconnected renewables that are shared for mutual benefit and global sustainability,” combining expanded and modernised national and regional grids, large-scale power stations, wind farms, rooftop household and community grids, and off-grid solar installations. The overall goal is to make clean, solar energy available everywhere at all times, said Modi.
The proposed international grid is intended to be created in three phases over the next few years, with the ISA as the lead implementing body. The first phase, the “Indian Grid”, will link solar and other renewable grids in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The second phase will link this Asian grid to African power pools, before the third phase would achieve full global interconnection of power grids, with the target of providing 2600GW of interconnection capacity by 2050.ISA Director General Ajay Mathur described the proposed network as a potential “modern engineering marvel”, which could “build and support a transition away from fossil fuels to a cost-effective solar future and open up renewable electricity supplies to markets that have been historically underserved,” with transformational benefits for the world’s poorest. India is clearly intending to position itself as a pivotal player in this network, as well as in wider moves towards a low-carbon global future.
