About 65% of India’s energy requirements will come from non-fossil sources by 2030, said India’s Union Minister of Power and New & Renewable Energy. The number currently stands at 44%.
Speaking at the Energy and Resources Institute’s World Sustainable Development Summit 2024, he noted that India as a whole also aims to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45%.
“At COP26, we pledged that by 2030, we will have 50% of our capacity, which will be non-fossils, mostly renewables. In fact, it would actually be 60-65 %. We will be way beyond what we pledged,” he was quoted as saying by ANI.
He also highlighted India’s rapid transition to renewable energy, with 103,000 MW of renewable capacity under construction and 71,000 MW underbid.
“Our rate and speed and scale of the energy transition is perhaps unmatched. We are the only one who is issuing bids for round-the-clock renewable energy. We are the only country that is adding storage as a mission to bring the price of storage down,” he said. “Developed countries have become developed by using fossil fuels. 77% of the legacy carbon dioxide load on our planet earth was caused directly by them, which has led to the rise in global temperature.”
Meanwhile, he said that India, with 17% of the global population, contributes to just 3% of the legacy carbon dioxide load.
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“The rate at which the developed countries are spewing emissions, if they continue at this rate. The available time before we reach that 1.5 degree rise in global temperature is just 4.5 years. But we don’t see any signs of their reducing their pace of emission,” he said. “Developed countries must realise that no country in the world is going to compromise on their development no matter how many speeches you give. You need to vacate carbon space so that the developing countries can develop,” he added. We need to bring down the price of the energy transition; otherwise, it won’t come down.”
