NEW DELHI --
India’s audacious plan to create a solar industry on the scale of
China’s almost from scratch gained credibility with President Barack
Obama’s pledge to lend U.S. financial support for the program.
Without giving any detail or making any specific
grant, Obama said the U.S. will “stand ready to speed this advancement
with additional financing.” The remark was made at a press conference on
Sunday in New Delhi as Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated his aim for India to install by 2022 as much photovoltaic capacity as the U.S. has now.
India’s ambition would require $160 billion,
according to Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive officer at the New
Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment & Water. It would spread
solar panels across an area the equivalent of three times the size of
India’s most populous city, Mumbai, and require the government to cut
back on thickets of regulation holding up projects.
“Whether Modi can achieve the target hinges on funding,”
Izumi Kaizuka, manager of the research division for RTS Corp., a
Tokyo-based consulting firm for the solar energy industry, said by
telephone today. “The pace of solar expansion has tended to be delayed
even under the previous goal which was much lower.”
With a growing population increasingly vocal about
pollution levels that rival the worst days in Beijing, India is racing
to find ways to feed its spiraling energy needs without adding to
greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate Talks
The solar program would help answer how India will
reduce fossil-fuel pollution as the United Nations pushes all countries
rich and poor alike to adopt targets in time for a climate summit in
Paris in December. India’s emissions are the third highest in the world
behind the U.S. and China.
In November, China joined the U.S. in pledging to cap
carbon emissions under through the Paris process, raising the question
of how India will address the issue. Modi built the solar industry in
his Gujarat state before taking office in May and moved clean energy up
the agenda for the nation since.
“For President Obama and me, clean and renewable energy is a personal and national priority,” Modi said.
His target is for India to have 100 gigawatts of solar
power by 2022, the same amount as China is targeting for 2020. If the
result is the same, India has a much bigger leap to make than its
northern neighbor.
China vs India
China has 33.4 gigawatts of solar capacity installed
now and custody of most of the top 10 panel makers worldwide. India has
3.3 gigawatts of capacity and no major PV manufacturers, according to
Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Though India may struggle to reach its solar goal, the
government’s backing increases the prospect of success and, in any
event, the target makes the country an attractive market, said Xie Jian,
president of Chinese solar panel supplier JA Solar Holdings Co.
JA Holdings sees India as a key market, Xie said. His
view is echoed by Shawn Qu, chief executive officer of Guelph,
Ontario-based Canadian Solar Inc., who said in November during an
interview in Wuxi, China, that he expects India to become one of the
fastest-growing solar markets in the world.
Money remains an issue. For now, India is attracting a
fraction of the funds heading to China, the U.S. and Japan, which were
the largest solar markets last year.
Wooing Developers
“The important thing is to make financiers more comfortable with solar projects
in India by avoiding retroactive changes and ensuring payments for
solar power are actually made,” said Jenny Chase, lead solar analyst
with BNEF. “India’s solar market is expected to accelerate rapidly as
solar gets even cheaper and local companies and governments gain
experience.”
India’s solar market will rank fourth in the world
this year, up from eighth in 2013, BNEF said. Clean-energy investments
of all types in India increased to $7.9 billion last year and are
expected to surpass $10 billion in 2015, according to estimates from
BNEF. China saw $89.5 billion in clean energy investments in 2014, while
the U.S. brought in $51.8 billion.
“India has a big financing problem because its local
interest rates are very expensive,” said Xie at JA Solar. At the same
time “overseas financiers find themselves under huge pressure because
India’s foreign exchange rates fluctuate widely.”
Coal Rivals
Modi also faces the task of weaning the country off
its consumption of coal, the fuel for almost 60 percent of the
electricity that the nation produces. Renewables, including solar and
wind, account for 12 percent, according to the latest government
figures.
Asia’s second-biggest energy user has traditionally
depended on coal for its power, setting up large stations to meet peak
demand and end blackouts that can last up to 10 hours a day in some
parts of the country.
Coal India Ltd., which produces more than 80 percent
of the coal that India produces, plans to boost production to 507
million metric tons in the 12 months ending March 31. The nation’s coal
and power minister, Piyush Goyal, has urged a more ambitious target to 1
billion tons a year in five years.
“A huge roll out of new coal would undo all the good”
promised by the solar targets and the agreement by Modi and Obama to
push for a phase-out of climate-damaging refrigerants, the environmental
group Greenpeace said.
Land Use
Even if Modi mollifies coal producers and, with
Obama’s backing, gets the funding the industry needs, real estate is
sure to prove to be another challenge.
All those solar farms need land -- and lots of it. A
typical 20-megawatt plant takes up about 100 acres of land. Were it to
install all its hoped-for capacity in the form of big solar farms,
India’s ambitions mean it must carve out 480,000 acres of land -- three
times the current size of the metropolis area of Mumbai, India’s
most-populous city.
Of course not all the capacity will come in sprawling
solar plants. While almost all of India’s installations to date are
ground-mounted farms, Modi’s ambitions will need to rely heavily on
rooftop solar, according to a research report from Bridge to India
Energy Pvt., a New Delhi-based solar advisory.
All the same, Modi’s drive hasn’t gone unnoticed by companies eying the nation as one of the next big renewable plays. SunEdison Inc. has announced plans to invest $4 billion to build the biggest solar panel factory in India.
The manufacturer based in Maryland Heights, Missouri,
is also developing wind and solar energy projects in the south Indian
state of Karnataka. “What was different yesterday was we have the 100
gigawatt number in the context of a joint statement as opposed to a
national statement, which is of some significance,” Navroz Dubash, a
senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, said by
phone, referring to the Jan. 25 pledge.
Copyroght 2015 Bloomberg
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/01/us-to-support-indias-160-billion-solar-energy-push
No comments:
Post a Comment