September 8, 2015

By William Pentland

The government of India is putting a new twist on the meaning of clean coal.

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: PMINDIA

In a recent directive, India's Ministry of Power is requiring coal-fired power plants to bundle their electricity with power generated at solar farms. The idea is to make solar power more competitive with coal power -- and it will help achieve Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious new solar deployment goals.

In 2014, India elected Prime Minister Modi in an overwhelming victory that included a broad mandate to improve India's power sector. The blackout in India that affected 620 million people in 2012 created a political crisis that has yet to subside entirely.

In November 2014, Modi's administration announced plans to dramatically increase the government's targets for deployment of solar energy to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2019. Previously, the National Solar Mission had aimed to install 22 GW of solar by 2022. Currently, India has a total installed solar capacity of less than four gigawatts.

The directive released in July instructs the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC Ltd.), India's largest state-controlled electric utility, to sell electricity from coal plants and solar plants as a single unit. NTPC plans to construct several 15 GW solar power plants by 2019.

India was the fourth-largest energy consumer in the world in 2011, following China, the United States and Russia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Over the past decade, economic growth and government-sponsored modernization programs have resulted in a rapid rise in energy demand. Despite having large coal reserves, India has become increasingly dependent on imported fossil fuels to meet its rising energy needs.

The prodigious amounts of electricity needed to power India's emerging economy – which has struggled to address recurring shortfalls in power supply -- combined with efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions has resulted in a patchwork of government policies promoting solar energy.

Several U.S. companies are jockeying for position in India's emerging solar market. SunEdison, a leading solar developer based in St. Louis, Missouri, recently installed eight solar photovoltaic systems for India's Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, which are expected to generate collectively about 2.5 gigawatt-hours of solar power annually.

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