Official: India will no longer set annual clean energy targets
A senior government official announced that India would no longer set annual targets for clean-energy tenders, after failing to meet the goal last year and building up an enormous backlog of projects?without buyers.
Indian developers already own the rights to build 43 gigawatts worth of renewable energy, but they have yet to find buyers. State utilities delayed purchasing clean power because they expected prices to drop and were concerned about the delivery of power due to delays with transmission infrastructure.
In November, it was reported that India's Clean Energy Ministry has asked renewable implementation agencies find buyers for power generated by these tenders.
In an interview, Santosh Kumar Sarangi said that based on their initial assessment, the implementation agencies are still confident they can sell a large amount of electricity from that backlog.
Sarangi said that less than half the capacity not sold may be cancelled.
In this context, the government intends to change how clean-energy tenders are issued, moving away form fixed annual targets. Sarangi stated that new tenders would only be issued after assessing the 'demand from state utilities.
India originally planned to auction around 50 GW of clean energy capacity in the last year, but only ended up tendering 15 GW after auctioning approximately 50 GW each for 2023 and 2024.
Sarangi stated that India is still on track to reach its goal of 500 GW non-fossil energy power capacity by 2030. In 2025, the country increased its clean energy capacity by?about 38GW.
"We don't look at figures because we still have bids pending that need to finalised," Sarangi said, adding that the agencies are working with state governments to determine demand.
He said that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy may also change the structure of renewable energy agencies.
Solar Energy Corp of India, SECI, and NTPC could take over the role of federal renewable energy tendering agencies.
Officials said that the power producers had asked the government for relief from their roles as implementation agencies. The government is currently evaluating these requests.
According to a document from the power ministry, NHPC is the agency with the most unsold tenders, at 15.8 GW. SECI, on the other hand, has the least, at 3.9 GW. Sethuraman N. R., Mayank Bhardwaj (Editing)
(source: Reuters)
