Committed to achieve 50% of renewable energy sources ahead of 2030, says official

Gandhinagar: India is looking to achieve the target of 50 per cent of its total power capacity coming from renewable energy ahead of its stated timeline of 2030, a senior government official said on Friday.

Out of a total capacity target of 500 gigawatt from non-fossil sources, 485 gigawatt is being envisaged to come from renewable energy (RE), Secretary at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Bhupinder Singh Bhalla said.

Speaking at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit here, he said, "Our share of renewable energy in the total energy has increased substantially. Now it's over 42 per cent of India's total energy capacity and that is significant." He further said, "We are committed to achieve 50 per cent of the capacity by 2030 and we are on path to achieve that and we hope to do that much earlier than 2030." Bhalla said India's RE capacity has increased from about 76 gigawatts in 2014 to 180 gigawatts at present.

"The target is of 500 gigawatt of non-fossil capacity, out of which we will have about 485 gigawatt of RE by 2030," he said.

While 180 gigawatt of RE capacity is already functional, another 175 gigawatt is under implementation.

"That shows the scale at which India is progressing. Majority of it will come on board. It maybe a little delayed at some time but most of the projects are supposed to come online and we expect that to happen," he added.

Bhalla acknowledged that the gap between the targeted total capacity of RE and the combine of existing and upcoming capacities needs to be covered and has to be planned and executed.