Renewable energy (RE) sources contributed to 71% of the 26GW of power generation capacity that India added in FY 2023-2024, according to the latest edition of the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF) Market Handbook.

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India’s total installed energy capacity has reached 442 GW, of which 144 GW (33%) was from renewable energy sources, and 47 GW (11%) came from hydro.

“Consequently, the coal/lignite share in India’s total installed capacity tipped below the 50% mark for the first time,” the handbook said.

The CEEW-CEF Market Handbook also found that solar—grid-scale and rooftop—continued to dominate India’s RE capacity addition, accounting for 15 GW (or 81% of RE addition) in FY24.

Wind capacity addition almost doubled and stood at 3.3 GW vs 2.3 GW in FY23.

For the first time since FY17, nuclear capacity (1.4 GW) was added in FY24.

“In line with India’s ambitious renewable energy goals, RE auctions reached a record with 41 GW of auctioned capacity in FY24, the report found. Further, in this financial year, eight auctions with energy storage components were concluded, indicating a growing shift towards innovative power procurement formats,” CEEW added.

“The CEEW-CEF Market Handbook found that 95% of India’s targeted 50 GW annual RE bidding trajectory was met in FY24. Bids of 47.5 GW that were issued are approximately three times the RE capacity that has been added annually in recent years. Further, there is a clear tilt away from pure vanilla RE procurement. Innovative formats such as wind-solar hybrids, firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE), and RE-plus-storage accounted for 37% of the capacity auctioned. Going forward, we can expect this share to increase further as innovative formats accounted for 57% of bids issued,” said Gagan Sidhu, Director, CEEW-CEF in a statement.

India formally updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to fight climate change in August 2022, confirming to the United Nations apex body that it will reduce the emissions intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 45% from 2005 levels by the year 2030, and to have installed capacity for non-fossil fuel-based power sources equivalent to the country’s 50% requirement by 2030.

The CEEW-CEF report also found that peak power demand (met) continued to rise in FY24 and reached a new high of 240 GW.

This was mainly due to factors such as a fast-growing economy and lower-than-expected rainfall in August 2023 and October 2023, above-normal temperatures in November 2023, and severe cold days during the winter months in north India.

In electricity demand (met) terms, there was an increase of 8% compared to FY23.