The Ministry of Power (MoP) has issued a vision document which charts the way forward for India’s power sector. The document points out the problem areas and sets the timeline for every aspect of power generation, evacuation, and distribution.

The document, called “Vision 2024”, aims at developing a sustainable, viable, efficient, and competitive power sector to facilitate economic and social development. The report points out that the generation capacity in India has increased drastically in the past decade, but the sector is beset with falling plant load factor (PLF) and stressed assets. 

Transmission is a huge problem for Indian renewable energy project developers. In many cases, renewable energy projects are ready to evacuate, but the evacuation infrastructure is not ready. In some other cases, due to the lack of proper transmission infrastructure, renewable energy has to be curtailed.

India would significantly exceed its 2015 Paris Agreement target of a 40% share of installed power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, stated the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

Based on India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) projections, instead of 40%, India will have 63% of installed capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2029-30. And this amounts to 60% more than what India had committed to achieve under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. IEEFA’s statement is based on a report released by the CEA. The CEA’s report on Optimal Energy Mix scenario projects that India could have 63% of its installed power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources, including hydro, by 2029-30. According to the CEA, the growth in new installed power capacity will lead renewables to generate close to 44% of all electricity consumed in India in 2029-30.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued guidelines for 5G trials across all available spectrum bands indicating to allocate up to 400 MHz of radio waves for experiments. The DoT has fixed a uniform fee of INR 5,000 (~64 Euro) for the trial licence. However, its validity will range between 3 month and 2 years, depending on the purpose for which the trial is being conducted.

The government has plans to conduct spectrum auction for 5G services by the end of this year to enable the roll-out of commercial services using the technology in 2020.

Indian entities involved in R&D, manufacturing, telecom operators and academia for the purpose of R&D and experimentation can get licence for a period of "up to two years, renewable on case to case basis by WPC, subject to truncation to prevent interference to licensed operations".

With investments of $90 billion in renewable energy over the last decade, India is placed sixth in the list of countries that have made the most investments in clean energy, says a new study. China, the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are the top five countries. While China invested $758 billion, the US came in a distant second with $356 billion in the decade between 2010 and the first half of 2019.

The European Union delegation in India and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy have jointly launched standard operation procedures and monitoring tool for Indian solar parks.

Solar parks are key for India to achieve its target of 100 GW by 2022, contributing to this target with 40 GW. 100 GW will avoid 0,15 gigaton of CO₂ in the atmosphere yearly. The EU has been collaborating closely with India in deployment of climate friendly energy sources including solar energy. 

Developed as part of the EU-India cooperation in Clean Energy and Climate Partnership Project, the Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) and monitoring tool were launched by Additional Secretary of MNRE, and  Charge d'Affaires, Delegation of the European Union to India.