Renewable Energy to account for 45% of production in India by 2030
Indian Solar Manufacturers have something to cheer about as part prices granted duty exemption
July 25, 2014First Solar finally puts the ghost of its Ordos massive 2000 MW Solar Farm to rest
July 30, 2014Renewable Energy to lead by 2030
Solar and wind energy additions are going to be substantially higher, as compared to the existing forecasts leading to major issues for fossil fuel 
exporters. Solar energy will account for almost 30% of the total capacity addition by 2030 or 800 GW, which means ~50 GW of additions per year. This does not seem too far-fetched, given that India and China may install 15 GW this year. Wind energy will follow with 500 GW and 440 GW of hydro energy. This means that only 900 GW of thermal and gas based power will be added.
India will be the biggest factor in production addition, given the paucity of fossil fuels and its rich solar resources. The country is set to benefit as its capacity addition time coincides with the grid parity cost reached by solar energy.
Read our complete list on Pros & Cons of Renewable Energy.
The main reason for this jump will be the fast falling cost of solar power. Solar power will cost between 6-12c/kWh, which will be comparable to wind, coal and gas based power. In addition to matching costs, coal and gas power also have issues with carbon emissions and sever pollution. Imported coal and LNG costs will become too high for them to remain competitive. This means huge issues for major coal and LNG exporters in Australia, Qatar, USA and Canada. These countries have huge surpluses of these fuels and are rapidly building infrastructure to export them. But given the grid parity to be reached by solar energy by 2020, that these investments might go to waste or not earn the ROI which is expected (eg. Sabina Pass etc.)
The gas plants built using LNG will have plants costing 14c/kWh, which means they cannot compete with solar plants with average price of 8c/KWh. Imported coal or coal plants using expensive cleaning technology such as scrubbers, carbon tax etc. will also not be able to compete with solar and wind energy. Wind will continue to have a LCOE of 6-16c/kWh and will continue to be built at a steady pace.
The forecasts of IEA and other organizations continue to be very conservative in spite of the fast declining costs and expanding scale of solar energy. Solar has rapidly become very competitive with coal and gas even without taking into account the massive environmental costs imposed by fossil fuels, besides issues related to energy security and reliability.
Solar PV and wind energy will beat both coal and gas on costs – without subsidies – in the major Asia energy markets of China and India by 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
This is going to translate into a renewable share of electricity production of 45 per cent for India by 2030, 33 per cent in China, 31 per cent for Suuth-East Asia and 26 per cent for Japan.
As this graph above illustrates, BNEF believes that the LCOE of solar will be as low as “Over time we expect the coal LCOEs for Australia, Japan and China to converge around $133-137/MWh as China is expected to impose similar environmental constraints (eg, high- quality coal, carbon price, scrubbers) as the other two. India and Southeast Asia will remain as low as $60-81/MWh in 2030 unless they take similar environmental measures as China.”