Renaming Renewables

Will a new categorisation of hydropower plants trigger revival of the sector?

- Kundan Pandey

HOW DOES one quickly increase the share of renewable energy in a country’s total energy mix? Going by the government of India, it requires a simple file order. On March 6, the renewables sector accounted for 20.6 percent of India’s total energy production, but the next day, the share jumped to over 33 percent. This became possible because on March 7 the Union Cabinet brought all hydro projects of more than 25 MW capacity under the renewables category. So far, only hydropower projects of under 25 MW capacity were considered in the renewable category. This would help revive the ailing hydropower sector, states the Cabinet decision.

For a good one-and-a-half decade after Independence, hydropower was India’s main source of energy. In 1962-63, it contributed 51 percent of the country’s total energy mix, shows data on the power ministry’s website. In 2018-19, the figure stands at 13.1 percent. Ashok Khurana, director-general of the Association of Power Producers, a grouping of 27 big power sector units, says that small and large hydropower projects should be at least 35 to 40 percent of India’s energy mix for optimal load management.

The reason behind the fall of hydropower is twofold. One, hydropower plants are complex and time taking to build and, hence, costlier than conventional and other renewable projects. While the construction cost of solar power plants is R6-6.5 crore per MW, coal-based plants cost R8 crore and hydropower projects cost around R10 crore. Two, since the plants are expensive to build, the electricity they produce is costlier. A report of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission says that in 2017, discus paid 1.11 to 8.55 per kWh for purchasing hydropower from Union government-owned generation companies, while the cost of power from coal-based plants was between 1.92 and 5.69 per kWh.