Coal, energy and development

Renewables may be the future, but are they the present?

Three important features define the background for discussions on renewables and coal. 

First, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, India led the initiative to launch the International Solar Alliance at the Paris meeting in December 2016, underpinned by an enhanced domestic effort to dramatically increase renewable capacity to 175 gigawatts by 2022. 

Second, this renewables push comes against the recent history of dramatic over-expansion in thermal capacity fuelled by the growth optimism of the mid-2000s. This combined with financial stress in discoms has led to plummeting capacity utilisation (plant load factors or PLFs), and raised the spectre of stranding thermal power