Like China, India also aggressively revised its renewable energy targets. The latest policy decision comes from the Ministry of Power in India that sets out an ambitious new target for the share of renewable energy in the country’s electricity consumption.
The Ministry of Power, Government of India, issued order no. 23/03/2016-R&R dated 14 June 2018 stating the revised Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) targets at the national level. As per the order, the country has target of 21% share of renewable energy in its total electricity consumption by March 2022.
The order also sets targets for each financial year between 2019-20 and 2021-22. Targets for 2016-17 to 2018-19 have already been specified in a similar order issued 22 July 2016.
Evolution of India’s RPO trajectory
Over the last few years, India has aggressively increased its RPO targets as it has also increased its capacity targets. Until May 2014, India had set a target to have 15% of total electricity consumption from renewable energy sources by March 2022. The share of solar power was envisaged at 3%, which was inclusive of the 15%. The solar power capacity target was 22 gigawatts by March 2022.
After the current government came to power, the solar RPO target was increased to 8% by March 2022, and installed capacity target was increased by nearly five times to 100 gigawatts. A detailed timeline for auctions and commissions of projects was issued last year to help the federal as well as state agencies to match their own targets with the national targets.
Now, the latest revision notified by the Ministry of Power will require states to revisit their current trajectory and realign them to the national targets. The jump in non-solar RPO target is insignificant — 10.25% in 2018-19 to 10.50% in 2021-22. However, the jump in solar RPO target is massive — 6.75% in 2018-19 to 10.50% in 2021-22.
While India continues to set aggressive renewable energy procurement targets at the federal level states have been rather slow to adapt. According to CARE Ratings, only six of the 29 states have aligned their own targets as per the national guidelines for FY2018-19. This is one of the reasons that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy was forced to create a new body to check RPO target compliance of states.
There have been cases earlier when obligated entities failed to meet RPO target due to lack of adequate supply of solar power or other renewable power. To address this, the order states that at least 85% of the target, in each category, must be fulfilled. The balance 15% obligation can be met from other renewable power, in case of any shortfall from the original source.
At the end of FY2017-18, the share of renewable power generated in total power consumed in India was around 8.5%. The share of renewable power consumed would slightly lower given the transmission losses. The cumulative RPO target for FY2017-18 was 14.25%.
Read more at India Targets 21% Power Consumption from Renewable Energy by 2022
Illegal production of CFC-11 in China has a climate impact equivalent to 16-20 coal power plants, the Environmental Investigation Agency estimates.
Chinese factories are illegally producing chemicals that damage the ozone layer and the climate.
That was revealed in a survey of manufacturers carried out by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and corroborated by the New York Times on Monday.
The EIA identified eight companies in four provinces that were using CFC-11 in the production of plastic foams, which are most commonly used for building insulation. It is one of a group of chemicals banned under the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer.
“These and other well placed sources in the Chinese chemical industry strongly suggest that this is a wider practice,” said the agency’s Avipsa Mahapatra.
The green watchdog estimates up to 70% of Chinese rigid foam production uses CFC-11, which has a global warming effect as well as depleting ozone. By the EIA’s calculation, this illegal activity has a climate impact equivalent to 16-20 coal power stations.
Its findings go a long way to explain mysteriously high levels of the pollutant detected by air monitors, in data published in Nature last month.
Read more at Mysterious Emissions of Banned Greenhouse Gas Traced to Chinese Factories
The carbon bubble will burst with or without government action, according to a new study. That will hurt people who invest in fossil fuels.
As energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies improve and prices drop, global demand for fossil fuels will decline, “stranding” new fossil fuel ventures — likely before 2035, according to the study in Nature Climate Change, Macroeconomic impact of stranded fossil fuel assets.
Researchers from Cambridge University and elsewhere found technological advances will strand fossil fuel assets regardless of “whether or not new climate policies are adopted,” but that “the loss would be amplified if new climate policies to reach the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement are adopted and/or if low-cost producers (some OPEC countries) maintain their level of production (‘sell out’) despite declining demand.”
That could “amount to a discounted global wealth loss of US$1–4 trillion,” and Russia, the U.S., and Canada could see their fossil fuel industries nearly shut down, the report says.
The best way to limit these negative impacts is to divest from fossil fuels and speed up the transition to a diversified, energy-efficient, clean-energy economy. Investing tax dollars to expand fossil fuel development and infrastructure, including pipelines, is irresponsible and incompatible with Canada’s Paris Agreement commitments, putting everyone at economic risk, and leaving us with polluted air, water and land, and increasing climate impacts and healthcare bills.
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Researchers found that while the shift from fossil fuels to conservation and clean energy is moving quickly enough to strand fossil fuel assets, it’s not happening fast enough to keep global average temperature from rising more than 2°C [3.6°F] above pre-industrial levels. That will require concerted action from governments worldwide to meet and exceed Paris Agreement commitments.
One often overlooked factor is efficiency. A study in Nature Energy found energy efficiency improvements could limit global warming to 1.5°C [2.7°F] above pre-industrial levels — the aspirational Paris Agreement target. Many experts have suggested limiting warming to that degree would require large-scale bioenergy deployment (burning forest and plant products for energy) and negative emissions technologies (removing CO2 from the air and storing it on land, underground, or in the oceans). But many of those technologies haven’t been tested on a commercial scale, and burning biomass creates pollution and affects land use, habitat, and food production — and the new report says warming could be limited without them.
Read more at Energy Efficiency and Technology Squeeze the Carbon Bubble
Replacing all those natural gas furnaces is going to be tricky.
Right now, most homes are heated and cooled by fossil fuels, and changing that is going to be complicated and painstaking. A new report breaks down the numbers (more on that in a moment), but first, let’s quickly review why it needs to happen at all.
Decarbonizing means electrifying — yes, including your furnace
We know that over time, we need to Electrify Everything! That is to say, a crucial part of reducing carbon emissions is switching energy uses that currently run on combusted fossil fuels — notably, transportation, heating and cooling, and heavy industry — over to electricity, to the extent possible, so that they can run on zero-carbon power.
The heating and cooling of buildings accounts for about 10 percent of US emissions. While that’s not as big a carbon challenge as, say, transportation (28 percent), in many ways, electrifying the residential sector is trickier.
Right now, roughly 37 percent of US homes are electrified, mostly in the South, mostly using inefficient baseboard heating rather than efficient heat pumps. (Only about 1 percent of American homes currently have heat pumps.) Some 48 percent of homes use natural gas, which dominates in every region except the South. And 14 percent use “other,” i.e., fuel oil or kerosene, almost entirely in the Northeast. (Climate Central has a great breakdown of heating fuels in the US; so does the Department of Energy.
Read more at Most American Homes Are Still Heated with Fossil Fuels. It’s Time to Electrify.
If you can’t count on the federal government to protect its citizens from the ravages of climate change, then you have to count on the states to step up. With the sixth largest economy on planet Earth, California has led the way in vehicle electrification, EPA emissions standards, solar homes mandates, and many other energy policy efforts to thwart climate change. Not to be outdone, however, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has announced the release of the state’s comprehensive Energy Storage Roadmap to guide New York toward a “nation-leading” energy storage target. NY’s Roadmap sparks the development of clean energy technology while supporting the Governor’s energy storage target of 1,500 megawatts by 2025.
NY's Roadmap
The ambitious 1500 MW goal is equivalent to the electricity demand of 1/5 of all NY homes. The comprehensive plan will also bolster the Reforming the Energy Vision strategy to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers to combat climate change.
Read more at NY’s Energy Storage Roadmap Set to Achieve Nation-Leading Target of 1500 MW by 2025 to Combat Climate Change
