27 States Have Not Met Even Half Of Their 2022 Renewable Targets

Majority of Indian states, including several currently facing power crisis due to coal shortage, have not even met half of their renewable energy targets for December 2022, according to a new analysis.

As of March 2022, the country had installed 110 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity excluding large hydropower projects, according to think tank Ember Climate. That's just 63% of the 175 GW target that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration had targeted.

India is unlikely to achieve that target this year without including large hydropower projects—classified as renewable energy three years ago. The original target set in 2015-16 did not include such projects as they have a myriad of environmental and ecological concerns.

Ember's analysis shows that at a state-level there has been uneven progress. Only four states—Telangana, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Andaman & Nicobar—have managed to achieve and surpass their targets with three quarters of the year still to go.

Large power consuming states like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana are all well below the halfway mark and will have a lot to catch up, Ember said.

Incidentally, some of these are also the ones reeling under a power crisis as sweltering heat has pushed up power demand, and a coal shortage means they are having to resort to outages.

Other high-power consuming states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are inching closer to their 2022 targets. Uttarakhand and Sikkim are the only other two with over 50% of their target achieved.

The states that are lagging have also not seen much renewable addition over the past six months. During that period just two states, Rajasthan and Gujarat, have done most of the heavy-lifting, accounting for 73% of India's total renewable capacity addition.

In absolute terms, much of India's renewable energy capacity is concentrated in the western and southern parts of the country. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat lead with 16 GW of renewable capacity as of March, followed by Rajasthan with 15 GW and Maharashtra with 11 GW.

2030 Targets

India has now enhanced its renewable energy targets for 2030.

The country plans to install 450 GW of renewable capacity by the end of the decade. That means it will need a fivefold growth in solar, fourfold growth in wind and threefold growth in small hydro projects in the next eight years to meet the target. That means 42.5 GW of renewable addition every year on average.

Ember says it's possible but will require all the states and union territories to be fully engaged and aligned with the national target.