As India offers up cash and advice, sunny nations form a solar alliance

March 12, 2018

 

NEW DELHI: Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has moved to quickly scale up its use of renewable power. 

In 2014, the year Modi took office, India had 3 gigawatts of solar power. By the end of 2017, it had nearly 7 times that, or 20 GW, according to industry tracker Bridge to India, a renewable energy consultancy. 

Now India wants to quintuple that total by 2022 - a goal once seen as hugely ambitious but now considered within reach by energy experts. 

Progress is clearly happening quickly: During 2017 alone, India doubled its installed solar capacity from 10 GW to 20 GW. 

"India is going to maintain and accelerate the momentum. It will move to be the number two player in the next year or two," said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Australia-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a think tank. 

In 2017, India added the third largest amount of national solar capacity, just behind the U.S. and China, and was overtaking Japan, according to IEEFA research.