Que: 2023: Unveiling Business Odyssey

Ans: In 2023, India made significant progress towards adding renewable energy capacity to its overall energy matrix. The renewable energy sector’s growth has generated employment across the manufacturing, installation, and maintenance segments, as well as contributed to economic development and social welfare by providing power to remote areas. The rate of adoption of renewable energy has also accelerated, mirroring global trends thanks to the declining costs across the value chain, that have rendered it increasingly competitive, and in many cases, cheaper than traditional energy sources.

Continued investments in capacity expansion as well as technology enhancements across the value chain are likely to ensure that costs will remain low, and likely continue to decline, for the foreseeable future. The complementary technology of battery storage has also seen significant decline in cost, further accelerating the adoption of renewable energy. These reductions are also enabling the use-cases of peak shaving, energy shifting and grid management services in both behind-the-meter and front-of-the-meter applications across the globe. Notably, India has been moving towards renewable energy bids that require providers to supply round-the-clock, peak, and load-following power that take advantage of storage systems to address the reliability aspect of renewable energy supply.

In 2023, India also witnessed the increased adoption of automation, machine learning and other groundbreaking technologies. The integration of smart systems and AI applications is emerging as a potential game-changer, which could lead to optimising the efficiency of energy production and consumption. Green hydrogen also gained prominence, with a concerted effort to incentivise its production and set up domestic electrolyzer manufacturing, to offer a cleaner and sustainable alternative across several use-cases.

Que: 2024: Unlocking New Horizons

Ans: 2024 promises to bring a host of opportunities for the renewable energy industry, including ToD tariffs for C&I players, which are expected to further incentivise investment in RE as well as storage systems. While the outlook for 2024 remains optimistic, there are some aspects that, if unaddressed, could potentially hamper the efforts towards reaching the aspirational targets that have been set. Most significant among these are the barriers that have been set up to protect the domestic manufacturing industry in the form of the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) and the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) listing requirement. In contrast, other countries like the United States have chosen to incentivise domestic manufacturing for renewable energy and green hydrogen through production and investment credits in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).