India has made another major milestone in its energy portfolio!
The country has successfully added another 50 GW to its renewable energy capacity in the last five years.
As per the government data, around 98 GW of power generation capacity has been added between March 2015 and December 2019.
52% of this capacity was generated from renewable technologies alone with solar energy holding the dominant share. Addition of 30 GW of new projects contributed to the overall share of renewable energy projects.
Whereas, 14 GW of capacity was added to the wind energy sector. However, the sector saw a little decline due to government’s decision in competitive auction regime in early 2017.
With a total installed capacity of 37.5 GW at the 2019 end, the wind energy is most likely to lose its top position to the solar energy.
Meanwhile, the power generated from biomass and biofuels has increased more than two-fold from 4.4 GW to 9.8 GW during the said period. However, the growth in capacity addition declined with only one Gigawatt adding since March 2018.
The country’s largest hydropower projects with more than 25 GW capacity also saw only a small capacity addition over the last five years, with only 4 GW added to them.
Nuclear power saw much lower capacity addition of just a single GW.
Fossil fuels such as coal, diesel and gas witnessed around 42 GW capacity addition, with coal holding the dominant share in the respective category.
Coal witnessed the addition of 41 GW capacity after many of its previous power plants suffered a standstill. Whereas, gas-fired and diesel-fired power plants saw less than 2 GW addition due to cost factor and lack of government support.
Share of various technologies in new power capacity additions in India
The diesel-fired power plants capacity declined from 1200 MW to 500 MW during the said period.
