A struggle for renewables as China powers up with coal

The world's biggest climate conference in Dubai has commenced, featuring India and China, two of the world's three largest emitters, expected to play pivotal roles in negotiations on the extent of the climate pendulum's swing to combat global warming.

- S DINAKAR

However, India faces a dilemma, having focused aggressively on renewable growth before the pandemic, with limited success, sacrificing thermal generation. In contrast, China, during the same period, added record capacities in both coal-fired generators and renewable installations to power its economy.

It was only recently that New Delhi realised clean energy alone couldn't propel its ambitions of Aatmanirbharta and becoming a global manufacturing hub. This prompted a U-turn this month, with Minister of Power and Renewable Energy R K Singh pitching coal-based generation to top power executives.

This course correction follows India's struggles to meet a 240 gigawatt (Gw) peak load, expected to rise to 335 Gw by 2035, one-third of China's 1,290 Gw peak demand in 2022.

India's major obstacle to doubling its economy by 2030 or maintaining a 7-8 per cent growth rate is the lack of baseload generation capacity to handle sudden spikes in electricity use during peak hours, according to experts. Currently, coal-fired plants are doing the heavy lifting, operating at 65 per cent, rating agency CRISIL said. Renewables contribute a mere 11-12 per cent of generation.

"India's continued reliance on coal arises from uncertainties in demand growth and the high costs of battery technology, which do not address our energy security considerations," said Karthik Ganesan, director of research coordination at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water.