2022 Year End Review On Renewable Energy

India has made good progress in terms of new capacity addition in 2022 reaching 166GW of cumulative RE capacity (till October 2022) and a 41.4% share in the total installed capacity. In line with the highly ambitious goal of achieving 500GW of RE by 2030 and the becoming Net Zero by 2070, the government is working steadily towards fulfilling its commitments.

This year, the Government announced the Green Hydrogen policy, finalised the RPO trajectory through to 2030, introduced GNA regulations and Green Day Ahead Market regulations, increased the outlay for PLI scheme and passed the Energy Conservation Amendment Bill. These will be essential in accelerating the clean energy transition and reduce dependency on imports.

Having said that, all is not hunky dory as it seems. Although a lot of measures have been introduced, some policies have been rather skewed. The focus must be on creating an integrated and balanced ecosystem benefitting all the stakeholders. A few teething issues that came up this year and added to the woes of the developers were a) mandating the ALMM list b) Imposition of BCD on modules & cells. It is imperative to note that all the solar capacity that has come online this year has been for projects for which the solar modules were procured before March 2022 and hence were not impacted due to the BCD imposition.

If the government doesn’t take any remedial action, then the sector will suffer a major setback. Hence, the government must defer ALMM until at least 30GW of module & cell manufacturing capacity is installed in India, open Project Import Route till India has bankable capacity to ensure that cheapest renewable energy is available to discoms and corporates and remove BCD at least for C&I project and focus on capacity building.

By focussing on project execution and directing our efforts in bringing the allotted capacity online, we would be able to help India move closer to its commitments and enter a new phase of unparalleled growth.