India, 3rd biggest CO2 Emitter, will Pause new Coal Plants for 5 Years in favor of Batteries, New Solar

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sibi Arasu at the Associated Press reports that the Indian government is going to pause new coal plants for 5 years in favor of concentrating on new battery power.

This step is a huge about-face for India, and it matters. Some 73% of Indian energy still comes from coal, and it is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. It doesn’t hope to reach zero carbon until 2070, too late to save the earth from the worst consequences of climate change. Lots of coal plants were already in the pipeline before this freeze, and they will likely be built.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a goal of installing 365 gigawatts of solar by 2031-32. He also wants Indians to manufacture their own panels, and slapped a 40% import tax on Chinese solar panels last year. The Indian panel manufacturers, however, have not actually been able to keep up with demand, so the government has decided to cut the tariff in half to 20%, in good news for the industry. India can annually manufacture panels able to generate 32 gigawatts of power, but Indian industry is demanding 52 GW each year.

The government would like to install that 52 GW a year of renewable energy, but recently has only been able to put in about 17 GW a year. If India is to reach its climate goals, it will have to get closer to 50 gigs per annum.

Still, India’s solar PV capacity by 2027 is projected to be higher than that of coal, and indeed to be the highest in the world, involving the installation of 1500 new gigawatts.

India, a country of 1.4 billion people, is now the world’s most populous, having edged out China. It has a Gross National Product of around $3.3 billion, making it the world’s fifth-largest economy, just behind Germany. Of course a lot of people are desperately poor and its per capita GDP is low. There is, however, a large middle class of some 100 million people in India who essentially have a European standard of living in purchasing power parity.

Up until the last decade, 300 million Indians still lived in a medieval world without electricity. The Hindu nationalist government of Modi is popular in part because it has brought services like electricity to the entire country. Electrifying the whole country, however, creates enormous demand for power plants, and India is rich in inexpensive coal and is tempted to use it.

What India’s government may slowly be discovering, however, is that coal is expensive. It is objectively expensive compared to solar power in India, and it causes global heating, which is hitting India particularly hard, with unbearable heat waves this spring.

The decision to concentrate on expanding battery power over the next five years suggests that India is generating a lot of energy from sources such as solar that is being lost because of lack of storage. New Delhi has decided to pick this low-hanging fruit, and it is very good news.