The parliamentary standing committee on energy will examine in detail issues relating to India’s international commitment of achieving over 450 GW renewable energy by 2030. The move is significant as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced India’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2070 at COP26 recently and increasing capacity of non-fossil fuel to 500 GW.
The parliamentary standing committee scrutiny is noteworthy as India now faces the challenge of adding 400 GW of renewable energy in eight years – an average of 50 GW addition per year. So far, India has added 8 GW per annum on an average.
The 28-member committee has 11 MPs from Opposition parties and 17 from NDA.
The committee will examine the government’s roadmap for achieving 450 GW renewable energy target – which was India’s commitment till earlier this week. Apart from this, it will evaluate prospects of thermal power plants in the light of the renewable energy target. Other related issues to be examined include evaluation of wind energy, National Solar Mission, enhancing domestic manufacturing capacity in renewable energy sector and integration of renewable energy into the national grid.
The committee led by Janata Dal United MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh had earlier examined the first part of India’s climate pledge of achievement of 175 GW renewable energy target by 2022. The pledge had included installing 100 GW of solar energy, 60 GW of wind energy, 10 GW of biomass power and 5 GW of small hydro power.
The panel had examined the action plan for achievement of 175 GW and submitted a report in March 2021 which had taken a grim view of India’s progress towards achieving the target by 2022. The committee had noted that in over a decade since the launch of National Solar Mission only 39 GW of solar energy capacity had been installed and 36 GW of solar energy projects were under implementation.
The rooftop solar programme was launched in February 2019 and was aimed at achieving 40,000 MW by 2022. The committee noted that in 2019-20 only 472 MW of capacity was achieved against target of 3,000 MW and had observed that target of 40 GW of solar energy capacity by 2022 “is highly unlikely to be achieved”.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com
