Wind sun atom india’s climate plan looks doable but it involves major challenges like reforming discoms

Wind sun atom india’s climate plan looks doable but it involves major challenges like reforming discoms

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate combat plan seems realistic, given India’s imperatives, but needs plenty of government and political effort. The final goal of net zero by 2070, a phase when emissions of greenhouse gases by human activity are offset by steps to neutralise it, seems a doable deadline, but one which will be revised as science advances. Of immediate relevance however are targets set for 2030.

The energy sector will do the heavy lifting over the next decade, with a changing energy mix expected to cut both projected emissions and carbon intensity of growth. The key 2030 targets are a non-fossil energy capacity of 500 GW and half the energy to be sourced from renewables. Where do we stand today? India’s installed capacity at the end of September was 388.84 GW, of which around 40%, or 155.5 GW, was from non-fossil fuel sources. Renewables right now mean solar and wind capacity additions.

Excluding hydro projects, India’s installed renewable capacity is about 100 GW. The private sector today owns about 48% of the capacity. For India to meet its 2030 targets, private investors need an incentive to keep at it. That’s where the political economy challenge lies. India’s power distribution system is broken and repeated attempts over 20 years to fix it have failed. The core issue is that state governments run a complex cross-subsidy regime in the backdrop of fiscal constraints that results in perennial overdues. Discoms today have overdues of about Rs 66,000 crore.

Electoral politics, like Punjab government’s recent decision to slash tariffs to unviable levels, have made reform hard. If India’s to meet its 2030 target, power distribution reforms need an all-party consensus on backing away from a competitive race to the bottom. India’s political class needs to find common ground. Also, a five-fold addition in renewable capacity needs to be accompanied by greater R&D investments by all stakeholders. IP needs to be held by Indian entities and we can’t rely largely on China, a dominant player here.

Two other points. India should not depend on the West for clean tech. It needs to set up a fund for incubating ideas in this field. Vaccine inequity has shown global help is uncertain at best. Second, we must not ignore nuclear energy, where India has done much work. As one of our columnists argues today, just focusing on renewables may push up costs of electricity. Nuclear energy deserves as much of a push as wind and solar.