Renewable Energy Market

A WWF report published in 2011 visualizes 100% renewable energy world by 2050. This report is optimistic about a transition to renewables by 2050 supplying energy at affordable cost. It says there is nothing more important to our ability to create a sustainable future. There are several studies on the theme by various organizations. It suggests that a well-developed mixture of solar, wind, fuel cells, and battery storage would produce greater supply than electricity demand, plus keep energy costs low. Considering the importance to energy supply every nation prepares road map to become 100% renewable at the earliest.

We need not stop at 1000 GW. Plan ahead. At present India's coal consumption is around 600 Million tons/year to cater 60% generation of 230 GW. As per coal statistics India's coal consumption doubles every ten years. According to a TERI report India's proven reserve is 114 Billion tons and extractable reserve is just 22 Billion tons as of 2012. It would be a scary picture of coal availability if the consumption and reserve are correlated. As such question of coal becoming the major contributor should be avoided. I wish the planners of the nation spend a few hours to study the critical situation of coal. India should stop building more coal fired plants with immediate effect. Projects in progress may go ahead.

Considering the stupendous potential of solar source India should give more attention to develop solar sector. India can learn lessons from EUMENA and Asia Super Grid. EUMENA is already on the road. European Union has already decided to limit coal fired plants. 81% of new capacity additions in EU is renewable during 2012.

India has a significant share of 18 GW (6.5% of 282 GW global) installed wind capacity as on 31.3.2013. Onshore wind potential was assessed as 102 GW at 80 metre height by the centre for Wind Energy Technology (2011). In two different studies onshore wind potentials are recorded as 4250 GW and 543 GW. This wide difference in potential assessed require validation before venturing into investment. Present vision is to have 779 GW wind power by 2035. May be an over ambitious target. India should be careful while taking this route.

Offshore wind generation global is slowly picking up and the present installed capacity is 4,620 MW, a major portion of which is in Europe. According to ambitious projections, a total of 80 GW offshore wind energy plants could be installed by 2020, three quarter of this will be in Europe. India also is trying its hand in the offshore sector though India's potential is not comparable with Europe. India to take caution while venturing into offshore projects.
Overall India to be very serious about power generation. Every resource that is considered is to be evaluated thoroughly before venturing to investment.