Recently the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) said that for the first time in FY 24, coal share in India’s total installed capacity fell below 50% while since 2017 nuclear capacity (1.4 GW) was added in the same fiscal. According to the latest edition of the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF) Market Handbook, Renewable energy (RE) sources contributed to 71% of the 26GW of power generation capacity that India added in FY 2023-2024. India’s total installed energy capacity has reached 442 GW, of which 144 GW (33%) was from renewable energy sources, and 47 GW (11%) came from hydro.
The CEEW-CEF Market Handbook also found that solar grid-scale and rooftop continued to dominate India’s RE capacity addition, accounting for 15 GW (or 81% of RE addition) in FY24. In FY23 the wind capacity addition nearly doubled and stood at 3.3 GW vs 2.3 GW. Since FY17 for the first time, nuclear capacity (1.4 GW) was added in FY24. According to a report, RE auctions reached a record with 41 GW of auctioned capacity in FY24. Further, in this financial year, eight auctions with energy storage components were concluded, indicating a growing shift towards innovative power procurement formats, says CEEW.
The CEEW-CEF Market Handbook found that 95% of India’s targeted 50 GW annual RE bidding trajectory was met in FY24. Bids of 47.5 GW that were issued are approximately three times the RE capacity that has been added annually in recent years. In addition, there is a clear tilt away from pure vanilla RE procurement. Innovative formats such as wind-solar hybrids, firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE), and RE-plus-storage accounted for 37% of the capacity auctioned. Going forward, we can expect this share to increase further as innovative formats accounted for 57% of bids issued, says Gagan Sidhu, Director of the CEEW-CEF.
In August 2022, India formally updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to fight climate change, confirming to the United Nations apex body that it will lessen the emissions intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 45% from 2005 levels by the year 2030, and to have installed capacity for non-fossil fuel-based power sources equivalent to the country’s 50% requirement by 2030. The CEEW-CEF report also found that peak power demand (met) continued to increase in FY24 and reached a new high of 240 GW. This was mostly due to factors such as a fast-growing economy and less rainfall in August 2023 and October 2023, above-normal temperatures in November 2023, and extremely cold days during the winter months in north India. In electricity demand (met) terms, there was an increase of 8% compared to FY23.
