The International Solar Alliance (ISA) has ranked India as an “Achiever” among its 80 member countries along with Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in its latest Ease of Doing Solar (EoDS) report.
Achiever countries are those with most favourable technical and commercial conditions for solar and perceived as most attractive for investments in solar. The report groups the countries in four segments — Achiever, Influencer, Progressive and Potential.
“Owing to strong potential, robust sustainability targets, high solar irradiation and developing power infrastructure, India has emerged as a leading performer among the ISA member countries along with Brazil, Saudi Arabia and UAE,” the report said.
It states that there has been growing lender interest in renewable energy (RE) in India and 60 RE projects drew financing of over $2.5 billion in 2017, around 60 per cent of which came from non-banking financial institutions.
“India’s renewable energy financing structure may need further reforms to boost the flow of capital into the sector in order to achieve the ambitious 2022 and 2030 targets,” the report said. India is implementing the world’s largest RE expansion plan with a target of 450 Gigawatt (GW) of renewable power by 2030 with 175 GW deployment by 2022.
The policy enablers that have worked for India include amendment in the National Tariff Policy prescribing solar-specific Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPOs); regulations around RE certificates and feed-in tariff and grid integration; and 100 per cent FDI allowed under the automatic route for RE projects.
In terms of infrastructure, 42 solar parks of 23,499 MW have been approved in 17 states; 60 solar cities have been approved with $1.3 billion investment for setting up 50 solar parks of 40 GW capacity by 2020; and solar cells and modules manufacturing capacity of 3 GW and 10 GW annually.
The country had 35 GW of installed solar power generation capacity at the end of April 2020, fifth largest in the world. This capacity has grown 13 times in the past 6 years.