Share of renewable energy rises to 9%

The percentage of renewable energy in India’s energy mix has risen steadily to nearly 9 per cent from the 2014-2015 levels. But, the current installed renewable energy capacity of the country pales against the 282 GW conventional power generation capacity.

This is because despite the high installed generation capacity of renewable projects, a lower plant load factor reduces the amount of energy produced from these projects.

Till now, 83.38 GW of renewable energy capacity has been installed as on October 31, 2019. This includes 31.69 GW from solar, 37.09 GW from wind, 9.95 GW bio-power and 4.65 GW hydro power. According to data, the percentage of renewable energy in total electricity supplied in energy terms has risen from 3.72 per cent in 2014-2015 to over 8.9 per cent in 2019-2020 (till October 2019). Within renewable energy, solar showed the highest increase, up from 45,99.02 million units in 2014-2015 to 39,268.2 million units in 2018-2019. But, wind continued to dominate India’s renewable energy footprint, supplying over 62,036.38 million units in 2018-2019, up from 33,768.3 million units in 2014-2015.