India predicts it will exceed Paris renewable energy target by half

[chuckChuck]

India predicts it will exceed Paris renewable energy target by half

Government forecasts 57% of electricity will come from renewable sources by 2027, above 40% target agreed at climate summit

Michael Safi in Delhi
@safimichael

Wednesday 21 December 2016 12.40 GMT
Last modified on Wednesday 21 December 2016 13.40 GMT

The Indian government has forecast that it will exceed the renewable energy targets set in Paris last year by nearly half and three years ahead of schedule.

A draft 10-year energy blueprint published this week predicts India will be generating 57% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2027. The Paris climate accord target was 40% by 2030.

The forecast reflects an increase in private sector investment in Indian renewable energy projects over the past year, according to analysts.

The draft national electricity plan also indicated that no new coal-fired power stations were likely to be required to meet Indian energy needs until at least 2027, raising further doubts over the viability of Indian mining investments overseas, such as the energy company Adani’s Carmichael mine in Queensland, the largest coalmine planned to be built in Australia.

India’s energy minister, Piyush Goyal, has been appealing to wealthier nations to provide capital to invest in renewable energy projects to help the country reach and exceed the targets agreed in Paris in November 2015.

Significant state investment has not been forthcoming, but Tim Buckley, a director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said India had made up the shortfall with an influx of capital from the domestic and overseas private sectors in the past 12 months.

Japan’s Softbank has committed to invest $20bn (£16.2bn) in the Indian solar energy sector, in conjunction with Taiwanese company Foxconn and Indian business group Bharti Enterprises.

In September the largely French state-owned energy company EDF announced it would invest $2bn in Indian renewable energy projects, citing the country’s enormous projected demand and “fantastic” potential of its wind and solar radiation.

Adani opened the world’s largest solar plant in Tamil Nadu earlier this year, and in October the energy conglomerate Tata announced that it would aim to generate as much as 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

Buckley said India’s “absolutely transformational” forecast was also driven by technological advancements that have led to the price of solar energy falling by 80% in the past five years.

“India is moving beyond fossil fuels at a pace scarcely imagined only two years ago,” he said. “Goyal has put forward an energy plan that is commercially viable and commercially justified without subsidies, so you have big global corporations and utilities committing to it.”

In the 2027 forecasts, India aims to generate 275 gigawatts of total renewable energy, in addition to 72GW of hydroenergy and 15GW of nuclear energy. Nearly 100GW would come from “other zero emission” sources, with advancements in energy efficiency expected to reduce the need for capacity increases by 40GW over 10 years.

About 50GW of coal power projects being developed in India would be “largely stranded” under the forecast, Buckley said, with official modelling showing that “none of these plants are required before 2022 and only possible before 2027”.

[Robertbarlage]

Experts.... predictions? Lmfao

[chuckChuck]

“India is moving beyond fossil fuels at a pace scarcely imagined only two years ago,” he said. “Goyal has put forward an energy plan that is commercially viable and commercially justified without subsidies, so you have big global corporations and utilities committing to it.”

The interesting part of this story is that this is being done without subsidies and they are not investing in more coal at least not for awhile.

Once renewables are a better investment than fossil fuels, then adoption really takes off. It seems that India is already well on its way.

So the argument that we shouldn't do anything about reducing emissions because the rest of the world is not doing anything is very short sighted.

[Robertbarlage]

Actually chunky your right because they do have nuclear power and hydro .

[chuckChuck]

The potential is enormous, says MIT physics professor Washington Taylor, who co-teaches a course on the physics of energy. A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That’s more than 10,000 times the world’s total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. “It’s finite, but we’re talking billions of years,” Taylor says.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-10-vast-amounts-solar-energy-earth.html#jCp

[Robertbarlage]

So if we harness all that energy we won't freeze? Or something else we never thought of ?

[blackpowder]

Not too hard to keep people in the dark who are already there with no way out.
India can skip the 20th century because most of its population never saw it.
I'd rather be cautious while watching India do it. Hey, if it works it could be their way out of poverty.
Doing it their way here could be our way into it.

[oneoff]

Time to do the math using figures provided recently


173,000 terawatts of solar energy strike the earth continuously
thats claimed to be 10,000 times total world energy use
10 mega watts of energy requires covering 70 acres of the earths surface
much of earth is covered by oceans; a little bit by fresh water and productive farm land maybe shouldn't be covered by solar panels or pavement or probably houses; but even the proponents of solar don't always practice what they preach

Is anyone suggesting that the Arctic and Antarctica are not in the 10,000 times more sunlight energy striking the earth than is used in whole world. Do we really want to tap that great 24 hr production for parts of the year.
converting solar to electricity, storing in "batteries" or transporting it through electrical grids is sure to knock off 5 to 10 % of efficiency at each one of the steps. (thats as good as it gets Sorry)

Solar panels deteriorate over time as they age. Just a fact of life. The output drop is significant and will be noticed. How do you provide lightning protection to 70 acres of panels all tied together.



Relying on setting up a solar electrical generating system for Sask would (over an average time period ) have 15% of panels producing power. That isn't a made up claim; it on the Sask Power web site. Sask Power also says it would/will be very expensive. And anyone will find that statement repeated multiple times as they gain some knowledge about what is seen through rose colored glasses.

So somebody do the math about how many acres of ground (Assuming oceans are not going to be sacrificed; and water bodies covered etc); and take some reasonable efficiency figure; and be realistic about the resources required and the transmission lines and facilities that would truly be an amazing project and consume a tremendous amount of inputs that are always ignored. Is everyone sure that every input required has the green stamp of approval and no fossil fuels were used in any plastics, metals, oils and resources required.

First check to see if the decimal place isn't off considerably in that 173,000 terawatts solar energy striking earth/10,000 times world energy use/15% solar utilization factor that apparently only applies to Sask Power production and is very costly according to some official spokespersons.

Does this do away with current need for a backup system; assuming the solar option has no problems and panels surround everyone in every direction.

Ok. those are some of the factors that need to go into the equation or obviously there are going to be some red faces and fingerpointing to say the least..

I'll look forward to a whole bunch (most probably it will all be pooh poohed and is too difficult to waste time on); but this problem does need to be recognized and addressed by the solar experts.

In an ideal world; nothing breaks down; shit doesn't happen and there is absolutely no excuse for an accident.

But in the real the power still will occasionally go off. So just tell me what scheme is in place to address the real problem of "islanding" (when solar generation is so ubiquitous and more than the currently minutest portion of Sask generating mix). Simply stated its some parts of electrical system still are at least partially energized; when some sort of fault has caused a total power failure somewhere else on the grid. And many people are trying to fix a much more complicated system

The problem is that we will have switched from literally a handful of large power generating stations; run by well trained gov't employees; and unless we have every one of those solar power producers with totally adequate fault protection; for every possible imaginable failure; then any combination of back feeding even small amounts of power into the grid could make you liable for the deaths and injuries that are sure to occur (only a matter of time scenario).

There is a lot more to consider than we are being led to believe.. Who do you believe??,

[furrowtickler]

Chucky if you actually believe India will do that I have a herd of unicorns for sale for you. I will give you a discount if you buy more than 3 .

[stonepicker]

I would bet money that India will continue with their plan to build an extra approx. 450 coal fired plants and that they will use them.

[blackpowder]

I could cut and paste as many rebuttall articles to chuck as i felt like. My dont give a shit list is longer than my bucket list.

[blackpowder]

As a law abiding firearms owner, I learned 30 years ago to filter govt and media "studies". Like canola seed yields.
Lets try posting some common sense and gut coupled with first hand experience.

[stonepicker]

As a law abiding firearms owner, I learned 30 years ago to filter govt and media "studies". Like canola seed yields.
Lets try posting some common sense and gut coupled with first hand experience.

LIKE

[oneoff]

I stand to be corrected, but this is just about what one could expect when you do the math.

Just might have to correct myself. There's a big difference between Petawatts and Petwatthours. In a year it adds up to a factor of 8760 if sun or equipment continue to produce with no downtime. Could be that some of the later post figures quoted didn't recognize the difference, but the calculations below should be within reason. Some of the later posts may need correcting. Sorry

170 Petawatts is what entire power the earth receives from the sun. Same figure as learned scientist came up with in earlier post above.

29.2% of earths surface is land. I assume the water bodies are't a suitable place to mount solar panels so there are 57,510,000 square miles of land on which to place solar panels (and eveyrthing necessary that is associated with the control structures; transmission lines etc.

Sask power says their 6 proposed 10 Mwatt projects each takes up 70 acres of land. or about one nineth of a square mile. Thus about 90 Mwatts is output theoretically expected from a square mile one section of Sask land. Now just because this may start to fall apart; don't jump to the defensive conclusion that Sask is worst place in world for solar power. We're trying to show this either works as promoters claim...or its out of parameters by a significant magnitude.

So 57.5 million square miles times 90 Mwatts per sq mi (of land) is 5.2 Peta watts of potential solar electricity...which out of the 170 Petawatts of total power received from the sun is less than a thirtieth which just happens to be about 3% instead of the 100% we all were led to believe is available.

Now I'll look up the estimated electrical production of the world; and more importantly the total energy needs of the world at as close to the present time as is reported and available).

We'll see if that computes out to within a bulls roar of 10,000 times what could possibly be captured (at 100% efficiency) and ignoring how all that new manufacturing infrastructure,transportation; housing etc could possibly be brought up to some new stringent code (all compliant with renewable resources only) without generating a whole lot of additional CO2.....which also doesn't get acknowledged as a obvious consequence..

Because if we must have only "Renewable electrical power sources" we damn well better have "Renewable energy sources" and all that goes with it or this whole green electrical energy and carbon taxes crap will do squat for mother Earth if CO2 is the problem as suggested

[oneoff]

Again this info is removed to correct mistakes and confusion about difference between PetaWattts and PetaWattHours and confusion as to whether the quote referred to World electical power production or whether it quoted World total energy consumption



Quote
Institutions such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the European Environment Agency record and publish energy data periodically. Improved data and understanding of World Energy Consumption may reveal systemic trends and patterns, which could help frame current energy issues and encourage movement towards collectively useful solutions.

The IEA estimates that, in 2013, total world energy consumption was 9,301 Mtoe, or 3.89 × 1020 joules, equal to an average power consumption of 12.3 terawatts.[3] From 2000–2012 coal was the source of energy with the largest growth. The use of oil and natural gas also had considerable growth, followed by hydro power and renewable energy. Renewable energy grew at a rate faster than any other time in history during this period, which can possibly be explained by an increase in international investment in renewable energy. The demand for nuclear energy decreased, possibly due to the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.[1][4]

In 2011, expenditures on energy totalled over 6 trillion USD, or about 10% of the world gross domestic product (GDP). Europe spends close to one-quarter of the world's energy expenditures, North America close to 20%, and Japan 6%.[5]