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| Fig. 1: Fig.1 - Graph showing the growth of India's installed solar capacity in GW from 2017-2022. The dotted line shows the expected trajectory to the Government's 100 GW goal for 2022. [1] (Image Source: N. Roy) |
India's National Solar Mission, also known as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), is a major initiative launched by the Government of India to promote solar energy and reduce the country's dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation. The mission was launched on January 11, 2010, as a part of India's National Action Plan on Climate Change. One of the key objectives was to rapidly increase India's solar power generation capacity. The target was to achieve 20 GW of grid-connected solar power capacity by 2022. [1] This was later increased to 100 GW by 2022.
According to the 2022 issue of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, India's installed solar capacity was 49.3 GW in 2021. [2] This agrees with the Annual Report of India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), which lists 49.35 GW of installed solar capacity in 2021. [1]
The Annual Report also re-states the goal of the JNSSM and lists the goal of 100 GW installed solar capacity by the end of 2022. Additionally, it also gives information about Solar projects in the pipeline, with 40.86 GW under implementation at the time of publishing, and a further 20.53 GW tendered, leading to a total of 110.73 GW installed or in the pipeline. Unfortunately, the 2022-23 report shows that the Government failed to meet these goals. [1] The total installed solar capacity in India as of 12/31/2022 was 63.30 GW, with 51.13 GW under implementation and a further 20.34 GW tendered. This obviously falls short of the Government's intended goal of 100 GW.
In conclusion, in spite of steady growth rates of Solar in India in the last decade via the National Solar Mission, installed capacities of solar in India still lag behind official targets. Granted, the implemented capacity has far exceeded the original 20 GW goal of the JNNSM, but the numbers from 2022-23 are significantly short of the revised 100 GW goal of the program.
© Neel Roy. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Annual Report," Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, 2022-23, 2021-22, 2020-21, 2019-20, 2018-19, 2017-18
[2] "BP Statistical Review of World Energy," British Petroleum, June 2022.