India’s ambitious renewable energy target of 175 GW by 2022 has firmly placed renewables as a mainstream electricity supply option. This has attracted a great deal of attention from diverse stakeholders in India as well as the international community. While the social and environmental benefits of renewables are well known, they also have other benefits, in terms of enhancing energy security, price certainty and low gestation periods. However, in spite of these benefits, the 175 GW target has profound implications and can throw up myriad challenges for the Indian power sector, especially in the medium term. Some of these are potential higher direct procurement costs for DISCOMs, greater complexity in grid operations, higher capital requirements etc.

Given these benefits and challenges, it is vital for the electricity sector actors to critically look at the growth of renewables. This report is an endeavour in this direction. It attempts to understand the growth of renewables in the past few years and looks at the country’s progress towards reaching the goal of 175 GW by 2022. This is captured through various graphs and tables, relying less on a narrative.