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India Eyeing a New Monster 100GW Solar-Capacity Goal (arstechnica.com)

AmiMoJo writes: In a confirmed report India's energy minister suggested that the country is considering issuing a tender for 100 gigawatts of solar energy, which may be tied to solar panel-manufacturing buildout. In 2015, India set a goal to reach 100GW of solar capacity as part of its larger aim of 175GW of renewable energy in general by 2022. This latest 100GW tender would be for a 2030 or 2035 target.

The existing goal is ambitious, so a stretch goal further into the future is even more so. The country's current total solar capacity is just 24.4GW, (for context, as of this month the US has about 55.9GW of installed solar capacity total) but it's growing quickly. Utility-scale solar capacity grew by 72 percent in the previous year.

6 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What a priority by avandesande · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are lots of places in India with no power at all. If you have trouble raising the capitol to build a full scale power plant a solar installation might be more appropriate especially without a nationwide grid. This might be practical -vs- environmental.

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  2. Re:What a priority by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, more energy will help with infrastructure problems and should be a priority.

  3. Re:What a priority by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    what an idiot. the country has pollution levels through the roof, inefficient coal plants built in the 60s and is at least attempting to move in a positive direction to reduce pollution; and our resident genius gets to talk about their trains and corruption. I assume they should put everything on hold till they fix trains and corruption? what do you say about Trumpism then...

  4. 175 GW would be roughly 23% of India's energy use by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Translating a few numbers from here, that means India would be getting about 23% of total energy consumption from solar (it's currently 2.89%). And is attempting to roughly double nuclear power generation within 25 years...

    With even India onboard for a rapid ramp-up in low CO2 energy production, the CO2 reduction targets the world desires will be beat quite handily and without any additional effort. It was always the nations like India and China that were the big sources of CO2 so they are the main ones to watch in dealing with this issue.

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  5. Real reason - a stable demand for panels by willy_me · · Score: 5, Insightful

    India does not want to rely on China for solar panels - they want to build them locally. To justify building a local factory there has to be a stable demand to pay for it. You do this with large, long term projects -- like this one. It is important for India to not have their future energy production dependent on a country like China.

  6. Re:Good for you India by tbannist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are we really so detached from reality that praise is given in the present for accomplishing a possible and unlikely future event? Remember when India claimed they were making a tablet for $20 or when they said they would be on the moon by a few years ago without any external help?

    Have you looked at the American government recently? Even just having a plan to do something reasonably achievable that's not inherently evil does seem like a vast improvement over the current American government...

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