India will add 88 GW of coal-fired power, more than doubling the plan from six months ago
India's energy minister has said it will increase the size of its thermal power plant fleet to meet growing energy demand.
India said it will add another 88 GW of new electricity capacity by early 2032, 63% more than the plan released just seven months ago. Most of this capacity will be coal-fired, while gas-fired electricity generation will not be available to India due to the high cost of natural gas. This obviously goes against the COP28 inputs.
India will not only exclude natural gas power in its expansion plans, but it will not even use the gas-fired power plants it currently has, at least not in their full capacity. According to Bloomberg , which cites ministerial data, India's 25GW of gas-fired power plants have operated at 15% of their capacity so far this fiscal year.
Clean energy is also not on the table for India, because prices are too high and it lacks expensive storage capacity. The only zero-emission investments underway are nuclear.
Meanwhile, India's electricity demand continues to grow beyond expectations, with peak demand several times exceeding Energy Ministry projections of 229GW so far this year and forecasts of 366GW for fiscal 2032 .
Since gas is not a viable option due to costs, “India has no alternative but to expand coal-based power for the time being,” a professor of energy and climate at the National Institute of Advanced Studies Bangalore. “Storage is needed to provide clean energy around the clock, and we have neither the scale nor the desired cost of storage technology to meet our needs.”
Over the past five years, India, the world's fastest growing economy, has added 5GW of coal-based electricity generation capacity annually.
Now, in order to achieve its desired coal power expansion, India must remove obstacles to existing coal projects, such as delays in land acquisition.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/lindia-aggiungera-88-gw-di-energia-a-carbone-piu-che-raddoppiando-il-piano-di-sei-mesi-fa/ on Sat, 23 Dec 2023 06:30:01 +0000.