According to Ajay Mathur, Director General of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), India is poised not only to achieve its ambitious target of 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030 but also to surpass it, driven by an anticipated decline in battery prices by 2050.

“If you are putting 500 gigawatts during the day, you also are setting up very expensive storage to ensure that you also use it at night. Now, expensive storage implies that you and I pay a higher price for electricity than what we can afford. In a country that is already starving for electricity; in a country where the ability to pay for electricity is limited, to look at a future in which more expensive electricity is available doesn’t seem right. It is possible that the future may come around if battery prices fall. The ISA’s forecasts indicate that this would happen this year 2024 or 2025. If that happens, solar batteries become the energy source of choice because they’re the cheapest. In that case, India will not only achieve 500 gigawatts, it will exceed the target,” he said according to a source.

According to a report the energy sector expert said, “ Earlier, we had lithium phosphate batteries, before that, we had lead acid batteries. We are also looking at vanadium redox flow batteries. Therefore, the development of not the same kind of batteries is key in the move away from expensive batteries to batteries that are more likely to fit the need.”

Mathur mentioned the need to achieve climate targets to ensure that the global average temperature rise does not cross the 1.5 degree Celsius mark, compared to the pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels. “There is no doubt every country in the world needs to change to the circumstances, manage the change and also at the same time make sure that we do not cross the ‘Lakshman Rekha’ of irreversible change,” he said.

Earth’s global surface temperature has risen by around 1.115 degrees Celsius and the carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution is closely tied to it. Climate science says the world must have emissions by 2030 from the 2009 levels to keep the chances of achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius target alive.

Countries agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial levels to avoid extreme, destructive and likely irreversible effects of climate change earlier at the Paris climate talks in 2015.

Mathur raised the question of increasing pressure on developing countries to transition away from coal, emphasizing the importance of affordable energy storage solutions. He quoted that solar energy plus storage is already cost-competitive with fossil fuels in certain contexts, and said the continued decline in battery cost will enable greater adoption of renewable energy sources.

The ISA Director General said, “As they ( cost of batteries) keep declining, we will see more and more of electricity cost-effectively coming from these sources rather than from fossil fuel-based sources, In my view, it is the development of new energy storage technologies which is far more important than the phasing out or phasing down issues that seem to have caught our attention.”

India’s G20

Ajay Mathur also shared that India’s G20 presidency focused a great deal on the issue of the multilateral development bank (MDB) reform and on how financing could help jumpstart the renewable energy investment process. According to the independent think tank International Institute for  Sustainable, MDBs typically allocate around two-thirds of climate funds to mitigation initiatives and only one-third to adaptation projects.

When asked about some developed countries opposing the proposal of tripling renewables by 2030 at the G20 energy ministerial in Goa, The ISA GD said, "I don't think that there is any country which opposes the growth of renewables. It is the tripling of the target that is a problem because if you have very high achievements already, then tripling may become an issue." "What is important, of course, is what is the base year by which that tripling is counted? If the base year is 2005, it isn't that much of a problem for almost anybody. If it is 2023, then there is a problem," he added.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), tripling renewable power capacity by 2030 is vital to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Sultan al-Jaber, the new president of COP28, has also called for a tripling of renewable energy generation by 2030.

India

Asked about the role of carbon capture and storage as a mitigation strategy, Mr Mathur said that while CCS could be a complement in certain sectors like cement manufacturing, it is not a substitute for renewable energy deployment. "If you look at the discussions which happened just 15 years ago, our view was that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is essential for the power sector, we actually didn't see renewables growing to the extent that they are today.

"Today, nobody's talking about using CCS in a large sense for the power sector, because we see that renewable energy could meet almost all the needs in almost all the places. Similarly, we thought steel would be an area where CCS could be used.

But now, with the hybrid technology that Sweden is working on, we may have steel production, which uses green hydrogen, instead of using coking coal," he said.

"What is very clear is that there will be some amount of CCS that will occur", but its scope has diminished as renewable energy technologies have rapidly advanced, he said.

All these questions were asked during an interview with the Press Trust of India (PTI). India, as the G20 presidency, has invited IAS as one of the guest international organisations.

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