India has been on the eye of solar enthusiasts and insiders for a long time. It has excellent solar resources, a large population in need of reliable electricity, and the country’s leaders have been talking about solar for awhile. Actually, India and some of its individual states have incorporated some strong solar policies. Unfortunately, the political system and economy there are not at the level of many other countries, including neighbor China, limiting what has been achieved. Nonetheless, the future looks bright.
Most recently, the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has formulated an energy roadmap aimed at adding 30 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2017, with solar as a significant portion of that. MNRE intends to get India’s solar capacity up from 2 GW to about 10 GW by 2017.
To put all this into a bit of perspective, about 30 GW of solar power were installed worldwide in 2011, and then again in 2012.
Also, to date, India has only 27 GW or so of renewable energy capacity. Nonetheless, it added 12,437 MW of those from 2009 through January 31, 2013.
The government of India noted on March 11 that it is “giving various fiscal and financial incentives, such as capital/interest subsidy, accelerated depreciation, concessional excise and customs duties to promote power generation from new and renewable energy sources. Among the other steps taken to promote power generation from alternative sources of energy include preferential tariff for purchase of power generated from renewable sources, introduction of Renewable Energy Certificates and Renewable Purchase Obligation.”
The roadmap in which the country has expressed its 30 GW target is the country’s 12th. It is for the period 2012–2017.
