Overshadowed

India’s promising wind energy sector is struggling as the government gives more attention to solar power

- PRATHA JHAWAR

IN 2015, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) embarked on an ambitious journey to install 175-GW of renewable energy by 2022, but it set a sluggish target of 60 GW for the high-potential wind sector. Domestic wind sector was already mature by this time with an installed capacity of 25 GW. To achieve MNRE’s target, wind industry had to make annual addition of only about 5 GW over seven years. But attaining even this small success seems a far cry.

At present, India has installed capacity of 37 GW with 13-GW projects in the pipeline and another 10 GW to be tendered. But annual additions have already fallen from 5.5 GW in 2016-17 to less than 2 GW now. A 2019 estimate by crisil, global analytical firm that provides ratings, research and policy advisory services, shows installations will reach only 45 GW by March 2022.

The prime reason for this is the waning interest of project developers in the sector. Until 2016-17, the key incentives for them were tax benefits through Accelerated Depreciation and Generation-Based Incentive. Feed-in-tariff at this time was 5-6 per unit. Competitive bidding gai-ned ground after the model found success in the solar sector—it reduced tariffs. The model initially increased vigour in the wind sector and tariffs dropped drastically, the lowest being ₹2.43 in December 2017. But it was not sustainable. Worse, government set upper limits on power tariffs. Soon, interests started diminishing.