Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are widely regarded as the panacea to solve the world’s looming climate change crisis. But not so fast, experts say.
Concerns are mounting that rapid scaling up of such technologies could prompt a resource crunch, trigger serious reliability issues and worse, lead to power blackouts if the technologies are not properly integrated into national electric grids.
The issue is of particular relevance for India, which is on track to reach its goal of 175 GW of installed renewable capacity by the year 2022 and upto 450 GW by the year 2030. According to the central government, India’s total renewable energy installed capacity (excluding hydro power above 25 MW) had reached over 89.63 GW as of 31 October.
