Renewable Energy
Over past couple of decades, the Indian renewable energy sector has been dominated by strong capacity additions by wind sub-sector which continue to offer similar opportunities both on-shore and offshore.
The solar sub-sector is a recent entrant that made quick inroads and offering promising prospect with enabling policy regime. Small hydro and biomass both sub-sectors with almost identical installation capacities, largely remain untapped.
Opportunities
Solar
- The National Solar Mission intends to add 20 GW of solar PV & CSP by 2022.
- KPMG estimates a total installed capacity of 68 GW by 2022.
- Investment opportunities: EUR 82.5 billion.
- Enabling policy environment for PV & CSP.
Wind
- 5th largest installed wind power capacity in the world.
- The wind sector added a record 3.2 GW of capacity in 2011 compared with 2.1 GW in 2010, third rank globally in terms of new installations, just behind China and the US.
- Total installed capacity of 20+ GW out of an estimated potential of 50 GW at 50 mtr hub ht, additional 103 GW potential at 80 mtr hub ht.
- Wind power generation capacity in India has been growing at a robust CAGR of 20%.
- Estimated offshore wind power potential is 15 GW.
Bio fuels / Bio-energy
- About 32% of the total primary energy use and more than 70% of the country’s population depends upon biomass.
- Biofuels 2.0 for transportation by blending.
- Biomass for BOP and off-grid power systems.
- Despite the potential and relatively mature technology the biomass power generation potential in the country remains largely untapped.
Small hydro
- Hydro Projects upto 25 MW are termed as Small Hydro Power (SHP) Projects.
- Small hydro potential is estimated to be around 15 GW as against current capacity of 3.3 GW.
- Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh and Maharashtra are at the forefront of SHP in terms of installed capacity and capacity under implementation.
- The Ministry’s aims to reach an SHP installed capacity of about 6 GW by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan.
Areas of particular interest in India for EU companies in a few RE sectors include:
- Solar: EPC, developer, technology transfer, R&D collaboration, PV, CSP, Trackers, component and equipment manufacturing, solar farm analytics, niche segments in rooftop solar, training and support, developing the entire ecosystem.
- Wind: Developer, turbine component manufacturing, wind energy analytics, O&M, RE-powering, Off shore wind turbine research and technology collaboration.
- Biomass: Technology transfer, bio-fuels, research collaboration in energy crops, oilseeds, developers.