$223 Bn Investment Needed for India to Meet 2030 Wind and Solar Goals: BloombergNEF

India will require USD 223 billion of investment in order to meet its goal of wind and solar capacity installations by 2030, said research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF) in its new report Financing India’s 2030 Renewables Ambition.
 
The goal is part of the five decarbonization targets that had been announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in November 2021. Additionally, India aims to meet 50 per cent of its electricity demand from renewable energy, thereby making renewable energy especially crucial in meeting the country’s 2030 and 2070 climate goals.
 
According to the BNEF report findings, corporate commitments from Indian companies could help India achieve 86 per cent of its 2030 goals of building 500GW of cumulative non-fossil power generation capacity. By 2021, 165GW of zero-carbon generation had already been installed in the country.
 
Additionally, the Central Electricity Authority of India has forecasted the country’s reliance on coal to drop from 53 per cent of installed capacity in 2021 to 33 per cent in 2030, whereas solar and wind together make up 51 per cent by then, up from 23 per cent in 2021.
 
Explaining further on the report, Shantanu Jaiswal, lead author of the report and head of India research at BloombergNEF, said, “To date the growth of renewable energy in India has been funded by a diverse set of financiers. Debt and equity structures have evolved as the market grew and new risks emerged. India’s ambitious renewable energy targets now require further scaling up of financing with new instruments and learnings from other global markets.”
 
Yet, the scaling up of renewables in India faces regulatory, project and financing risks, with PPA renegotiation, land acquisition and payment delays cited as key risks by industry stakeholders surveyed by BloombergNEF.
 
In the short-term, rising interest rates, a depreciating rupee and high inflation create challenges for the financing of renewables, the report added.
 
“Scaling up financing to meet 2030 goals requires Independent Power Producers to tap into new or underutilized sources of capital. These could be revolving construction debt, investment infrastructure trusts and funding from retail investors, insurance companies and pension funds. Higher funding requirements also need measures that can increase the availability of financing, such as de-risking renewable projects to offering contractual terms that provide greater comfort to investors,” commented Rohit Gadre, analyst in BNEF’s India research team.