KEY POINTS

·        The Indian Government’s ambitious programme for renewables expansion aims to increase capacity in solar PV to 100 GW and that in wind to 75 GW by 2022.

·        The footprint of wind turbines continues to fall with the recent advances in technology such as the increase in size of the individual turbine. Leasing of land for wind could provide a stream of income while retaining most of the land for its original use.

·        Utility scale solar PV currently inhibits any other use of the same land, but this can change in the future. Agrivoltaics, or raised solar PV plants that allow agriculture in their partial shade can solve this problem, while also providing better productivity and water savings, especially for horticulture.

·        Even if all of India’s electricity generation of 1,561 Terawatt hours in 2018-19 came from solar PV, the total area required would be about 20,000 sq km.

·        The International Energy Agency, in its 2018 World Energy Outlook considered an electric scenario with significantly higher electrification of the Indian economy.

·        In this scenario, about 6,000 Terawatt hours of generation is projected, which would require about 80,000 sq km, if entirely provided by solar PV.

·        As wind turbines need less area, these estimates provide an upper bound for the total area required for powering India using renewables only. Note that the urban area of India is about 220,000 sq km, and a large fraction of this could be used for solar PV.

·        Land availability is not a limiting factor as we emphasise here. A lot of renewables can be absorbed in the grid if the right regulatory support is provided for grid balancing, and electricity system flexibility.

·        The real challenge is that the coal generation sector is under financial stress, and is likely to suffer further with the expansion of renewables.

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