Proud Moment For Us: India Increased Renewable Energy Use In 2019, Saving Money And The Planet

Traditionally, India has been one of the largest consumers of coal for the generation of electricity. It is also no secret that coal, among other fossil fuels, is one of the leading causes of pollution in the world.

However, in recent years, India has been making a giant shift away from coal-fired thermal plants to generating electricity from solar, wind or hydroelectric sources.

Reuters

Reported first by The Bulletin, there are various reasons that are contributing to this massive shift -- the main one here being cost. Costs of generating solar energy is getting lower that one could ever imagine -- making the source very affordable for implementation. The report gives an instance of a solar energy company in Rajasthan for a wholesale price of just Rs 2.44 rupees (approximately 3 cents) per kilowatt-hour. To put this into context, the average price for electricity in the US is around 13.19 cents or Rs 7.

Just earlier this year, India announced achieving its 20GW solar energy generation goal four years ahead of schedule, therefore setting a new goal of generating 100GW of solar energy by 2022.

Unlike other nations across the globe that are still hesitating to take a dip in the sea of renewable energy, India has doubled its renewable energy footprint in the past three years and is in a constant endeavour to multiply this even more. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has planned a five-fold expansion of generation of electricity through energy source by 2030.

Reuters

This all started when in 2017, then energy minister Piyush Goyal introduced online competitive ¡°reverse auctions¡¯ where they allowed people to make lower bids if they were to venture to build renewable infrastructure.

This tempted not just local but also international developers to make the most of the opportunity and install wind and solar infrastructures -- popularly in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. This indirectly brought prices down 20-30 percent when compared to coal-powered energy generation. The government also promised that these costs will be flat for 25 years.

Reuters

This also lead to the government of India enabling $40 billion new investment in the field of renewable energy generation as well as doubling its capacity in three years to 83 gigawatts by September this year.

The shift to renewable energy source is also enabling employment opportunities for people in the nation and is expected to reach $500 billion over the coming decade if everything goes according to the plan.