Enabling Just Transition in India’s Power Generation Sector

Background
The world is undergoing a paradigm shift towards achieving environmental sustainability and climate resilience across sectors. A key anchor for this envisaged shift is the energy sector, in particular, the power generation sector which contributes significantly to environmental deterioration through the air and other forms of pollution.

To counter this, India and several other countries have committed to take corrective actions in a targeted manner through global climate commitments adopted as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As part of its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), India has committed to upscale its non-fossil power capacity to 40 percent of the overall generation portfolio and reduce the emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

To achieve the climate-based goals in the power sector, a clean energy transition is required in the power generation sector, which essentially implies a shift from fossil fuel-based electricity generation to renewable energy generation. As an effort to meet its international commitments while addressing national environmental exigencies, India has been running one of the most ambitious renewable energy programs developing 175 GW of renewable capacity by 2022, ramping it to 450 GW by 2030.