India’s renewable power targets will lead to earlier phase-out of coal

Nagpur: The announcements made by India at the recently-concluded United Nations COP26 summit in Glasgow are all set to mark a historic beginning towards terminal decline of coal.

Even though the country opposed the commitment to phase out coal, latest analysis by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) reveals that the country’s target of renewable power generation capacity of 500 gigawatt (GW) by 2030 will likely provide all of India’s additional electricity demand without increasing power generation from coal.

According to the report titled ‘Powering Down Coal — COP26’s Impact on the Global Coal Power Fleet’, coal-fired generation of electricity will likely increase in the next few years in India, and then peak and decline as the addition of clean energy capacity accelerates towards the target. “This means that there is no case for adding new coal-fired power capacity. Also, the 500 GW target will already start the phase-down of coal in the country,” the analysis stated.

Researchers further highlighted that the country’s 2070 carbon neutrality target date leaves ample space for existing coal power plants to run until their conventionally assumed operating lives, implying no early retirement.

“The target of reaching renewable power generating capacity of 500 GW by 2030, up from 100 GW currently, will likely provide all of India’s additional electricity demand without increasing power generation from coal,” they said.

The global climate meet COP26 witnessed strong opposition to the inclusion of ‘accelerating phase-out of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’ — mainly from India and China. Both the largest coal consumers pledged carbon neutrality targets but refrained from any commitments on their domestic coal power sectors. As per researchers, this is unlikely to be a major domestic coal power sectors. As per researchers, this is unlikely to be a major cause of concern for India as its non-fossil electricity targets will“phase down” coal before 2030.

“Phase-down or phase-out does not really matter much. Coal is on a terminal decline. Phase-down is also a step towards phase-out. We will see this change, not just on paper, but in the real world over the next year and more importantly this decade” said Sunil Dahiya, analyst at CREA.

The study further found that that the announcements and pledges made at Glasgow climate summit will directly impact 80% of planned coal-fired power plants around the world. “Glasgow climate summit might have failed on several fronts, including on loss and damage fund as well as on adaptation. However, COP26 has taken historic steps towards ending coal. This is not just optics, announcements and pledges made at Glasgow have real world consequences on the global coal industry” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA.

TNN