India Could Plateau Coal Use by 2025-2030, Leading Politician Says - by Joe Romm

Heading into the December global climate talks in Paris, India’s leaders continue to assert they will not announce when their greenhouse gas emissions will peak.

One leading Indian politician, however, former Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, recently said that the country could plateau emissions starting in 2025 or 2030.  Ramesh, a former self-described “economic hawk,” called this goal “doable and necessary for India.”
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Certainly India is not in the same development stage as China and many other countries, as this World Resources Institute chart makes clear:

Yet China’s impressive carbon-free energy target raises the following question:  If China can build that much carbon-free power, over the next 15 years, why can’t India do, say, even half as much in the same time? After all, China’s commitment alone guarantees a continuation of the remarkable price drop in renewable power, a key driver of the ongoing global boom.

India is itself seeing price drops continue.  BloombergBusiness reported just a few days ago that “India’s Largest Solar Power Auction Brings Further Drop in Costs.”  A Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst explains, “This year’s weighted average bid price is likely to … be about 15 percent lower than the 2014 average.”

In late July, CleanTechnica ran an excellent two-part series, “How Solar Power Is Transforming India’s Energy Market.”  China’s solar market is accelerating rapidly, adding perhaps five gigawatts this year and seven to 10 gigawatts next year, well on its way to the government target of 100 gigawatts of solar by 2022.  The recent drop “brings utility-scale solar in India to a point where it may no longer need government support.”

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