
India may find it difficult to meet its 175 GW target by 2022, finds CSE and Down To Earth’s State of India’s Environment report
India’s renewable energy (RE) sector seems to be losing steam, even as the total capacity has reached almost 86 GW by December 2019, says the latest State of India’s Environment Annual report, released here at the 2020 Annual Media Conclave and Anil Agarwal Dialogue.
India has set itself a target of 175 gigaWatt (GW) RE capacity by 2022 -- mainly in the form of 100 GW solar (60 GW utility-scale and 40 GW rooftop) and 60 GW wind. Between 2014 and 2018, the RE sector grew from 2.6 GW to 28 GW -- a cumulative aggregated growth rate of around 18 per cent.
But, says the report, “there has been a slowdown in capacity addition and auctions due to emerging risks and unaddressed structural issues.” Annual additions to solar capacity have dipped drastically to 6.5 GW in 2018-19, from 9.4 GW in...