India’s power generation grew at the fastest pace in over three decades in the just-ended fiscal year, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, fuelling a sharp surge in emissions as output from both coal-fired and renewable plants hit records.<\/p>\n
Intense summer heatwaves, a colder-than-usual winter in northern India and an economic recovery led to a jump in electricity demand, forcing India to crank up output from coal plants and solar farms as it scrambled to avoid power cuts.<\/p>\n
Power generation rose 11.5% to 1,591.11 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or units, in the fiscal year ended March 2023, an analysis of daily load data from regulator Grid-India showed, the sharpest increase since year ended March 1990.<\/p>\n
Output from plants running on fossil fuels rose 11.2%, the quickest growth in over three decades, thanks to a 12.4% surge in electricity production from coal, the analysis showed, offsetting a 28.7% decline in generation from cleaner gas-fired plants as a global spike in LNG prices deterred usage.<\/p>\n
In the new fiscal year that began April 1, Indian power plants are expected to burn about 8% more coal.<\/p>\n
The rapid acceleration in India’s coal-fired output to address a spike in power demand underscores challenges faced by the world’s third largest greenhouse gas-emitter in weaning its economy off carbon, as it attempts to ensure energy security to around 1.4 billion Indians.<\/p>\n
Total power supplied during the last fiscal year was 1509.15 billion kWh, 8.4% higher than a year earlier but still 6.69 billion units short of demand, the widest deficit in six years.<\/p>\n
Electricity generated from coal rose to 1,162.91 billion kWh, the data showed, with its share in overall output rising to 73.1% – the highest level since the year ending March 2019.<\/p>\n
India’s Central Electricity authority estimates that 1 million kWh of power produced from coal generates 975 tonnes of carbon dioxide, while the same amount of power generated from gas produces 475 tonnes. A plant fired by lignite, known as brown coal, emits 1,280 tonnes to produce equivalent power.<\/p>\n
RENEWABLES PUSH<\/p>\n
Increased fossil fuel burning for power in the world’s fifth largest economy drove up CO2 emissions during the year by nearly a sixth, to 1.15 billion tonnes, Reuters calculations based on government data and emissions estimates show.<\/p>\n
That is 3.4% of the International Energy Agency’s estimate of annual global emissions of 33.8 billion tonnes in 2022.<\/p>\n
Many major countries boosted coal use in the twelve months due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the rise was steepest in India, data from energy think-tank Ember shows.<\/p>\n
The government has defended India’s high coal use citing lower per capita emissions compared with richer nations and rising renewable energy output.<\/p>\n
After missing a target to install 175 GW in renewable energy capacity by 2022, India is trying to boost non-fossil capacity – solar and wind energy, nuclear and hydro power, and bio-power – to 500 GW by 2030.<\/p>\n
India’s solar capacity additions have risen by about a fifth during the just-ended fiscal year, boosting its renewable energy output by a record 33.3 billion units, or 21.7%, to 187.1 billion units.<\/p>\n
The green energy output helped prevent as much as 32.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from power that would otherwise likely have been produced with coal, calculations show.<\/p>\n
The share of renewables in power generation, excluding big hydro and nuclear power, rose to 11.8% in 2022\/23, compared with 10.8% the previous year, the data showed, driven mainly by a 35% increase in solar output.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India’s power generation grew at the fastest pace in over three decades in the just-ended fiscal year, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, fuelling a sharp surge in emissions as output from both coal-fired and renewable plants hit records. Intense summer heatwaves, a colder-than-usual winter in northern India and an economic recovery led to a jump in electricity demand, forcing India to crank up output from coal plants and solar farms as it scrambled to avoid power cuts. Power generation rose 11.5% to 1,591.11 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or units, in the fiscal year ended March 2023, an analysis of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}