Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – India has invited bids on a 2 gigawatt solar power tender. The country has 64 gigawatts of installed solar capacity now. With other sources, especially wind, it has 169 gigawatts of renewable energy today. India’s goal is to have 500 gigawatts from low-carbon sources by 2030. So it is about a third of the way there and needs to triple its current capacity by then.
Still, Ember’s global electricity review finds that currently some 70% of India’s electricity is generated by fossil fuels, and in turn some two-thirds of that comes from dirty coal.
South China Morning Post from last year:
In 2022, solar power generation was up 27%, though new wind increased only 2.9%. Wind and solar together only met one-fourth of new electricity demand in India, a stark contrast with the United States or with global statistics, where almost all new demand is being supplied by sustainable sources. Unfortunately for India’s emissions, a lot of new demand is being met by dirty coal.
All together, wind and solar accounted for 9% of India’s electricity generation in 2022, lagging a bit behind most other industrialized countries, where that statistic is typically about 12%. Renewables are heavily concentrated in Rajasthan and Gujarat states. Other states will have to step up to the challenge if India is to meet its goals.
These developments are consequential. India is, or is on the verge of being, the world’s most populous country, at a little over 1.4 billion persons. That is 17.5% of the people in the world, roughly 1 in 6. The country has a gross domestic product of roughly $3.73 trillion, making it the fifth largest economy in the world after Germany. I couldn’t explain to you the odd lack of interest in India in the United States, but this is a country with an economy that now outstrips the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Brazil and Russia. Of course, since it is so populous, the per capita share of GDP in India is far lower than all the countries I’ve mentioned. But if you want to make geopolitical calculations, how much money a country makes matters even if individual citizens can remain quite poor.
US-India bilateral trade has doubled since 2014, hitting nearly $200 bn. in 2022. Still, US trade with China in 2022 was nearly $700 bn.
India’s economic and population might makes it potentially formidable in the Indian Ocean region. The United States would like to cultivate it to offset China, though at the moment New Delhi is tilting toward Russia instead.
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