One of many policies implemented under India’s highly regarded National Action Plan on Climate Change is the National Solar Mission, an initiative to spread solar technologies across every nook and corner of India. Though it doesn’t sound feasible, it is important to learn that India has already attained its renewable energy mark even before the target year.
In February 2021, India submitted its 3rd Biennial Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What’s crucial to learn from the report is India’s remarkable progress in terms of reduction in its emission intensity of gross domestic product (GDP) by 24% monitored between 2005 and 2016.
The report hints that India had successfully met the target of reducing the emission intensity of GDP by 20 to 25%, a little earlier than the target year 2020. November 2020 set another milestone in India’s Go Green Mission, when its installed electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel-based sources, i.e. renewable sources attained an astounding 38% mark.
In its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) presented in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, India set forth a target of achieving 40% renewable energy generation capacity by 2030, a mark close to achieved just in the initial years of this decade.
India's installed renewable energy capacity, as of January 2021, is at 92.55 GW, with solar and wind accounting for 38.79 GW and 38.68 GW, respectively. As per the Ministry of Power, the total installed energy capacity of India, as of March 14, 2021, is 379.13 GW.
India set a goal of 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2022, which was later increased to 450 gigawatts by 2030. To summarize India's total green energy generation potential, the government plans to provide 523 GW of renewable energy capacity (including 73 GW from hydro) by 2030.
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