India To Outdo Climate Commitments Under Paris Deal Believes Moody’s

The global credit rating agency, Moody’s Investor Service recently released its latest report, “Power Asia – Climate goals, declining costs of renewables signal decreasing reliance on coal power”. The report revealed that the share of generation capacity from non-fossil-based fuel sources in India will likely increase to 45 percent by 2022 as India plans to increase its renewable energy capacity, excluding hydro, to 175 GW and that both wind and solar have already achieved grid parity.

“This is higher than India’s commitment under the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Paris (the Paris Agreement) to have 40 percent of the country’s total generation capacity from non-fossil-based fuel sources by 2030,” the agency said in its report.

The report stated that coal power will remain important, but the possibility that it will become uneconomic is rising. “In our baseline scenario, renewable power will not grow fast enough to meet Asia’s total power needs on its own. But the share of coal power in Asia’s power mix is declining with governments’ climate change and air quality goals. And coal-fired generators could become uneconomic sooner than in our baseline scenario, given governments’ clean energy policies, the declining costs of renewables and ongoing technological advances,” it said.