India to almost double its renewable power capacity in next 5 years: IEA report

About IEA:

Established in 1974 as per the framework of the OECD, IEA is an autonomous intergovernmental organisation.
Its mission is guided by four main areas of focus: energy security, economic development, environmental awareness and engagement worldwide.
Headquarters (Secretariat): Paris, France.

Roles and functions:

Established in the wake of the 1973-1974 oil crisis, to help its members respond to major oil supply disruptions, a role it continues to fulfil today.
IEA’s mandate has expanded over time to include tracking and analyzing global key energy trends, promoting sound energy policy, and fostering multinational energy technology cooperation.

Composition and eligibility:

It has 30 members at present. The IEA family also includes eight association countries. A candidate country must be a member country of the OECD. But all OECD members are not IEA members.
India became an associate member of IEA in 2017.

To become a member a candidate country must demonstrate that it has:

Crude oil and/or product reserves equivalent to 90 days of the previous year’s net imports, to which the government has immediate access (even if it does not own them directly) and could be used to address disruptions to global oil supply.
A demand restraint programme to reduce national oil consumption by up to 10%.
Legislation and organisation to operate the Co-ordinated Emergency Response Measures (CERM) on a national basis.
Legislation and measures to ensure that all oil companies under its jurisdiction report information upon request.
Measures in place to ensure the capability of contributing its share of an IEA collective action.

Reports:

IEA Report findings-

Renewable energy will comprise 90 per cent of global electricity capacity expansion in the next five years and much of it will be in India.
China, the European Union and the United States will be three other geographies contributing majorly to this upward trend besides India.
Renewable energy’s installed power capacity addition will grow to 2,400 gigawatts (GW) between 2022 and 2027.
This expansion was 85 per cent faster than the previous five years and will be equal to the entire installed power capacity of China today.
With the addition of 145 gigawatts (GW), India is forecast to almost double its renewable power capacity over 2022-2027. Solar photovoltaic (PV) accounts for three-quarters of this growth, followed by onshore wind with 15 per cent and hydropower providing almost all the rest.

Two main policies (came in 2022) to boost domestic manufacturing are-

The duty on imports was increased to 40 per cent for PV modules from 15 per cent and to 25 per cent for solar cells in April 2022. This was done to reduce dependence on China and increase domestic manufacturing. This is expected to add 16 GW of PV capacity, 60 per cent higher than last year.
The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme sanctioned 9 GW of PV manufacturing capacity to provide an ecosystem of local manufacturing. This programme aims to expand India’s solar PV cell and module manufacturing capacity to over 70 GW in this decade, including 29 GW of manufacturing capacity fully integrated across the whole supply chain.

Solar, wind and discoms-

Hybrid projects refer to innovative combinations of solar and wind power at a site. It can include solar, wind, and battery or pumped hydro storage. Bundling coal with renewables is also another option.
Storage plays a key role in hybrid projects.
In July 2022, the Indian government suspended reverse bidding in wind auctions.
Drawbacks of the ‘reverse bidding’ process include-
- Good sites for wind energy projects are located only in coastal areas.
- Even within a coastal state, there are tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 sites depending on the wind intensity.
- Another problem in reverse bidding was the difference in the costs of the land.
- The government is looking for ‘closed envelop bidding’ But that may lack transparency. Also one has to look at different mechanisms in combination such as accelerated depreciation, generation-based incentives, or feed-in tariffs.
Higher renewable purchase obligations, which were announced in July 2022 and specify targets for wind, hydro, and other renewable energy sources (solar, bioenergy), should further encourage power utilities (DISCOM) to procure renewable energy.
Government can provide incentives to DISCOM for encouraging the instalment of Rooftop solar PV cells.