India, the world’s third-largest consumer of fossil fuels, has increased the green shareof green energy — renewables and hydropower — in the country’s total installed power capacity by 12.4 per cent in the last ten years, ending FY23.

According to a report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water’s Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF), the share of green energy in India’s total installed power capacity of 416 gigawatts (GW) in FY23 has risen to 41.4 per cent, or 172.1 GW from just 29 per cent (70 GW) in FY14.

Data from the CEEW-CEF’s market handbook (2022-23) shows that the share of coal and lignite-fired power plants fell by more than 9 per cent between FY14 and FY23.

The coal/lignite-based capacity in FY14 stood at 145.3 gigawatts (GW) accounting for 60 per cent of India total installed capacity, but declined to 50.9 per cent, or 211.9 GW in FY23.

Clean energy transition

On the other hand, buoyed by the government’s push towards green energy, the share of renewables, including solar and wind power, which stood 12 per cent (29.5 GW) in FY14 has risen to 30.1 per cent (125.2 GW) in FY23. However, the share of hydropower that stood at 17 per cent (40.5 GW) fell to 11.3 per cent, or 46.9 GW. 

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With the concerted push by the government through various initiatives such as the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme and to meet its commitments made at COP26, renewables capacity additions, particularly solar power, have grown at a healthy pace.

In the last four years, the share of capacity addition in solar power has more than doubled from 1.23 GW at the beginning of Q1 FY20 to 2.68 GW by Q4 FY23. Whereas, wind power capacity additions grew by 52 per cent from 463 megawatts (MW) to 703 MW during the same period.

RE dominates FY23

As per the report, a net power generation capacity of 16.6 GW was added in FY23 (against 17.3 GW in FY22). It was primarily dominated by renewable energy (RE) (15.3 GW or 92.2 per cent), followed by coal and lignite (1.2 GW or 7 per cent) and hydro (0.1 GW or 0.8 per cent).

In RE, solar (grid-scale and rooftop) continued to dominate capacity addition, accounting for 12.8 GW (83.7 per cent), against 13.9 GW in FY22. Wind capacity addition in FY23 doubled compared to FY22 and stood at 2.3 GW (14.9 per cent) against 1.1 GW in FY22. The share of small hydro and bio-power stood at 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively.

The report said that around 10 GW of RE capacity was auctioned in FY23 and another 41 GW was under the tendering process. This was also a significant year for energy storage in India with 4,020 megawatt hour (MWh) of standalone energy storage tenders being concluded.

In FY23, 9.91 GW of RE capacity was auctioned (against 17.47 GW in FY22). It consisted of six plain vanilla solar, five plain vanilla wind, three floating solar and three wind-solar hybrid tenders.

In addition, auctions for 1000 MW pumped hydro storage, 500 MW/1000 MWh battery energy storage and 500 MW/ 3000 MWh energy storage were concluded.

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