'India to easily achieve renewable energy target of 500 GW by 2030, challenges ahead'

Bhopal, Feb 24 (PTI) India will easily achieve its 500 GW production target from renewable energy in the next five years but may face challenges in meeting intermediate goal of 2,000 gigawatt by 2047, SECI CMD R P Gupta said on Monday.

The challenges will be in the area of land availability for setting up renewable energy projects, energy transmission and storage systems, he said while speaking at the MP Global Investors Summit (GIS) 2025.

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) is the nodal agency for implementation of renewable projects in India.

"The near term goal of the country is 500 gigawatt of non-fossil energy by 2030. We have already reached a commissioned capacity of about 218 gigawatt by the end of January, 2025," he said, adding around 150 gigawatt of the projects are under implementation.

Gupta asserted that he does not foresee any problem in achieving the 500 gigawatt target by 2030 considering "the kind of regulatory and the ecosystem which has been created in the country".

He said an estimated 2,000 gigawatt by 2047 from non-fossil sources would be required in the intermediate period towards reaching the country's overall goal of net zero by 2070.

"Now, that is something which will kind of pose a challenge, the challenge in the renewable sector which so far we have not faced, but we are going to face now." He said there will be three major challenges in expanding the renewable energy basket.

"The first challenge is going to be land. We have used the land which was readily available and these are the projects which are extremely land intensive projects. So land is going to be one of the challenges," Gupta noted.

To meet this challenge, he said, "That is where I think the role of the state governments and the business friendliness of the state government will play a major role in facilitating the projects." Most of the renewable energy projects would be attracted to those states where land is either readily available or the process for acquiring the land parcel is simplified.

Gupta said MP has been a very proactive state in making the land available and therefore the state will attract a lot of investment in the renewable energy sector.

He noted that the second challenge will be transmission of energy from the source to other areas of consumption.

Gupta also pointed out that India will also require steps to overcome the challenge of energy storage infrastructure, which has become a necessity, but on the positive side prices of energy storage systems, batteries have been coming down rapidly. PTI MJH RKL HVA

Source: PTI