In sync with the government’s plan to promote clean energy, state-run NTPC Ltd on Monday said renewable energy will contribute 52% to its electricity generation portfolio by 2020.
“Currently, renewable energy contributes 22% to NTPC’s share of electricity generation. By 2020 we aim to take this to 52%,” said Gurdeep Singh, chairman and managing director of NTPC at the Global Energy Technology Summit 2016 in New Delhi.
The National Democratic Alliance government has set a target to have an installed capacity of 175 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy by 2022. Of this, 100GW is expected from solar power and 60GW coming from wind power projects. India has an installed capacity of 26.8GW of wind and 7.6GW of solar power at present.
Currently NTPC has an installed capacity of 47,228 megawatt (MW) through 44 projects comprising 18 coal-fuelled stations, seven gas-fuelled stations and one hydropower project.
The government is also contemplating to add hydropower to the renewable energy category. The hydropower capacity of the country at present is 43GW.
“As of now, most of the generation is coal-based. So, while looking for cleaner ways to utilise coal, we are also looking to tap green energy. Furthermore, NTPC has set itself a target of coming up with 10,000MW of renewable energy generation,” Singh said, adding most of the new plants shall be coming in brownfield locations.
According to the company’s website, “NTPC has drafted its business plan of capacity addition of about 1,000MW through renewable resources by 2017. In this endeavour, NTPC has already commissioned 310MW solar PV (photovoltaic) projects.”
India’s power sector is the third largest in the world with around 200 million consumers after China and the US.
Experts say renewable energy is the need of the hour.
“It is not possible to avoid renewable energy in the power scenario anymore. Renewable energy has become a major source for the country and in the coming times will continue to do so,” said Vinay Rustagi, managing director at Bridge to India, a renewable energy consultancy.
Source:infracircle
