Clean energy, renewables, stubble burning: What the Union Budget 2021-22 missed - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Clean energy, renewables, stubble burning: What the Union Budget 2021-22 missed.

The budget lost the opportunity to address rural sector, where the Ujjwala Scheme will be extended to only one crore additional beneficiaries

Cleaner fuel for cooking, renewable energy targets and managing stubble burning remained conspicuously absent in the Union Budget 2021-22, presented by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman February 1, 2021.

The Budget lost the opportunity to address the rural sector as well, where the Union government’s Ujjwala Scheme will be extended to only 10 million additional beneficiaries. According to the last Census of India (2011), 63 per cent rural households used firewood as primary cooking fuel and 23 per cent crop residues and cow dung cakes.

Facilitating rural areas to shift to cooking gas will not only curb carbon emissions, but also reduce indoor air pollution and associated health issues.

The Budget also did not mention the Union government’s plan on dealing with crop residue, burning of which contributes heavily to air pollution in north India. A strategy on the collection and usage of crop residue could help building extra income for farmers, electricity generation from biomass and reduction in air pollution.

The Union government has recently been vocal about the achieving its renewable energy targets of 175 gigawatt by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030. The Budget, however, did not say anything about the government’s plans and the financial assistance available for the same.

India also failed to achieve its annual targets for solar installations in the last five years, according to the Economic Survey 2021.

Sitharaman in her Budget speech said, “To build up domestic capacity, we will notify a phased manufacturing plan for solar cells and solar panels”. This qualitative statement does not fit well with the aspirations of investors and manufacturers.

The industry was anticipating announcement roadmap and financial outlay for developing the solar manufacturing sector in India. Absence of a long-term strategy is a major disappointment and potentially wary off the industry. The safeguard duty on the solar cells and panels expired in July 2020.

Domestic manufacturers are unable to compete with cheap Chinese imports. However, the Union government has not announced long-expected basic custom duty on the solar cells and panels. It seems to have lost hope in developing solar manufacturing sector.

The Budget did announce duty on solar inverter: The big project developers with centralised biddings under state tenders (Solar Energy Corporation of India and others) will be covered under the change in law, but the small developers with private Power Purchasing Agreement (PPAs) will have to bear the heat of increased costs.

The solar rooftop sector will be largely affected as inverter cost component is higher due to heavy usage of string inverters.

The Budget has also been mute on tapping the potential of distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems in rural employment generation. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed industry structures and migrant issues. DRE would not only help in generating rural jobs but also in sustainable development. The Budget, however, missed this very important aspect of the Indian economy that could have helped streamline lives post-COVID-19. (Source; downtoearth)

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Clean energy, renewables, stubble burning: What the Union Budget 2021-22 missed.

What's behind the curious fall in renewable energy generation - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

What's behind the curious fall in renewable energy generation.

• Beginning June, renewable energy generation, typically, undergoes a seasonal slowdown for a couple of months
• The significant fall in renewable energy generation in August was attributed to low wind energy generation
Renewable energy generation fell 20% in August despite a notable expansion in capacity. This was the biggest monthly fall in at least three years, according to data collated by SBICAP Securities Ltd.
Wind generation fell despite an expansion in installed capacity. As of June, the combined installed capacity of wind and solar energy was 15% higher year-on-year.
What gives?
Beginning June, renewable energy generation, typically, undergoes a seasonal slowdown for a couple of months largely due to change in weather conditions and wind speeds.

The significant fall in renewable energy generation in August is being attributed to low wind energy generation.
According to India Ratings and Research Pvt Ltd, wind energy generation declined 27% in August. Given the high share of installed wind generation capacity in the country, the impact on overall energy generation is understandable.
Apart from variation in wind speeds, part of the fall in renewable energy generation in August was also attributed to curtailment in power off-take by several states in southern part of the country.
These states--Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu—have a high share of installed renewable energy capacity compared with the rest of the country. States generally realign their purchases to due to the softness in demand during the monsoon, often leading to reduction in utilization levels of thermal power plants. Thermal power generation dropped 3.5% in August.
The impact is more pronounced in the renewables segment. “They are not able to do proper integration of renewables," says a renewable energy developer referring to curtailments in power off-takes by certain states.
Another industry observer agrees, attributing the sharp fall in renewable energy generation to back-downs in power off-takes by certain states. Even so, with the monsoon season drawing to a close, these experts say generation should to improve hereon. “We have passed that period (June–August) when demand is low and generation also falls," says the developer.
Still, the fall in energy generation highlights the need for better planning at states. More so, given India’s ambition to achieve 1.75 lakh megawatt of installed renewable energy capacity by 2022. Power off-take curtailments and project execution challenges sap investor sentiment.
As pointed out earlier, renewable energy projects have been under financial stress. Payment delays and threat of tariff renegotiations have led to downgrades in credit ratings and pushed up finance costs, hurting returns and competitiveness of the sector. (Source: Livemint)


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What's behind the curious fall in renewable energy generation.

Climate change to affect India’s renewable energy plan: Study - Pragnya IAS Academy

Climate change to affect India’s renewable energy plan: Study.

Changes in wind pattern in the Northern Hemisphere and pollution are seen taking a toll of wind power and solar power plants, respectively Changing weather patterns may negatively impact India’s renewable energy generation capacity, said developers and weather scientists.

A recent research published in Nature Geoscience, which used 10 global climate models to investigate large-scale changes in wind power generation across the globe, indicated that there will be changes in wind power across Northern Hemisphere, with substantial regional variations.
Dr. K.J. Ramesh, director general of meteorology, India Meteorological Department, agrees: “The weather is bound to change due to climate change. When rainfall patterns are changing, the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall is changing, warming is changing, there will be appropriate changes in the wind regime as well.”
The findings could throw a spanner in the works of the world’s largest renewable energy programme launched by India, which seeks to produce 100 gigawatts (GW) from solar projects and 60GW from wind power plants by March 2022.
In fact, Hyderabad-based renewable energy firm Greenko Group said that in the past two years the company has faced certain headwinds in wind power generation. “In the average view, we are fine, but in the short-term, in the past two years or so, we have had a bad season. Normally, we don’t get to see two continuous years of bad seasons,” said Mahesh Kolli, founder, president and joint managing director, Greenko Group.
Dr. S.W.A. Naqvi, former head, National Institute of Oceanography, said India has already seen an inter-annual variability in wind-speeds.
Solar power developers, too, are aware of the changes in weather conditions. “Variability in solar radiation is being observed not just on seasonal basis but also on a year-on-year basis for the same locations. This is a challenge for independent power producers as the revenue model is solely dependant on the radiation levels received,” said Anmol Singh Jaggi, director at solar advisory firm Gensol Group.
Dr. Malti Goel, head, Climate Change Research Institute, however, said that more than climate change, increasing pollution levels are a cause for concern for solar energy. “With emissions on rise, we need to develop solar energy systems that can be maintained well in such changing circumstances, because the quantum of solar energy decreases, if pollution increases.”
The impact of climate change is also evident from the fact that India incurred losses of $9-10 billion, annually, due to extreme weather events. The Economic Survey 2016-17 also pitched for climate insurance instruments.
However, the Centre seems to be oblivious of the fact. “No developer has approached us till date with such a concern,” said a senior government official, requesting anonymity. There is no ‘conclusive’ or ‘visible’ evidence for the same, he added.
A ministry of new and renewable energy resources spokesperson, too, echoed simlar views in an emailed response: “There is no evidence from the ground that conclusively suggests that solar and wind power generation has been affected due to climate change consideration. None of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports supports such considerations. There are sporadic papers that have studied the inter-seasonal variability of solar and wind power, but there is nothing to suggest any long-term impacts.”
“Though effects of climate change are evident, as the minimum temperature has recorded an increase, but there has been no visible effect of climate change on wind patterns or solar energy,” said a ministry of earth sciences spokesperson.
However, scientists are of the view that one needs to take note of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which cause changes in global atmospheric circulation and potentially affect wind power. “Climate change is an important factor which needs to be taken into consideration before planning wind resources. The atmospheric circulation is expected to change, because of warming, which could affect the wind patterns as well. There is definitely going to be a potential impact,” said NIO’s Naqvi. (Source: Livemint)


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Climate change to affect India’s renewable energy plan: Study.

Diu Smart City becomes first to run on 100% Renewable Energy during Daytime - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

Diu Smart City becomes first to run on 100% Renewable Energy during Daytime.

Diu Smart City has become the first city in India, that runs on 100% renewable energy during daytime setting a new benchmark for other cities to become clean and green.

Diu had been importing 73% of its power from Gujarat until last year. It has now adopted a two-pronged approach whereby a 9 MW solar park spread over 50 hectares rocky barren land has been developed besides installing solar panels on the roof tops on 79 government buildings thereby generating 1.3 MW annually. To further enhance its solar capacity, Diu offers its residents a subsidy of Rs 10, 000-50,000 for installing 1-5KW roof top solar panels. Diu is saving about 13,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every year. Due to low-cost solar energy, power tariffs have been cut in residential category by 10% last year and 15% this year.
To improve traffic management in Bengaluru Smart City, a prototype of an intelligent traffic management solution is currently being tested in collaboration with the Electronics City Township Authority (ELCITA). It will provide traffic information that is currently unavailable, and help improve management of commuter traffic. It involves capturing video streams from several cameras and processing them using artificial intelligence so that typical traffic management tasks such as vehicle detection, traffic density estimation and control of traffic lights can be automated for real-time performance.
To revitalise urban public spaces and socially activating the area besides generating economic activity, Jaipur Smart City Ltd (JSCL) has planned to develop night bazaar at Chaura Rasta, in the heart of Pink city. The JSCL would register up to 700 vendors who will be allowed to set up stalls, including eateries, between 9pm and 1am. The project will provide entertainment, culture and shopping to citizens after office hours. (Source: PIB)


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Diu Smart City becomes first to run on 100% Renewable Energy during Daytime.