The world needs more electricity. As populations grow, standards of living increase and more people gain access to modern conveniences, countries will need to expand their energy generation capacity.
India, with its rapidly developing economy and a population of more than 1.3 billion, epitomizes this trend. The country finds itself at a crossroads regarding its energy future: Small decisions today will resound in the coming years.
In their latest report, the Indian government set a target of 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. For comparison, the country's total energy generation capacity today is about 380 gigawatts, out of which 90 gigawatts are of renewable energy, not including large hydropower stations. How this plan shapes up will dictate how many fossil-fuel powerplants they can avoid building.
It's ambitious. But based purely on economics, UC Santa Barbara's Ranjit Deshmukh, and his co-authors Duncan Callaway and Amol Phadke, think India should in fact double down on renewables. Their counsel stems from an exhaustive analysis of India's power usage, weather patterns and energy infrastructure. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that while renewables won't obviate the need for some additional fossil-fuel power plants, the country is well positioned to take advantage of green energy sources.
Mitigating carbon emissions is only one concern when it comes to developing countries like India. "Most of these countries have low historical carbon emissions compared to more industrialized countries," said Deshmukh, an assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Program. "So, the approach we take is that if renewable energy makes economic sense, then those countries should deploy more of it."
Because the cost of wind and solar, as well as battery storage, are dropping so rapidly, Deshmukh explained, it's actually cost effective to install these technologies instead of conventional fossil fuel technologies, like coal and natural gas, regardless of environmental considerations.
To arrive at these conclusions, the researchers created a comprehensive model of India's electricity system. They developed estimates of the country's solar and wind resources using spatial analysis and weather data along with India's existing energy capacity and predictions of its energy demand in the future. For each possible renewable energy target and mix of wind and solar capacity, the model determined the amount of new conventional capacity needed to meet demand for all hours of the year.
"The model's unprecedented detail on wind and solar resource availability provided foundation to explore how a range of important scenarios for India's load growth and technology costs could influence the future of India's power sector," said Callaway, an associate professor of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley.
Deshmukh and colleagues found that, contrary to prevailing assumptions, meeting high renewable targets would not avert the need to build a significant number of fossil fuel power plants, due to India's specific weather patterns and the requirements of meeting peak electricity demand. However, avoiding new fossil fuel capacity isn't the entire picture, he claimed.
