Coal to dominate India power output to 2030

Bloomberg

Coal may account for half of India’s power generation in 2030 despite a boom in solar and wind energy projects, according to analysis by the country’s power-planning body.
The assessment, released by the nation’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA), highlights that the nation has a large existing fleet of coal plants and that there’s a mismatch between peak periods of demand and output from renewables. That will leave a big role for the most-polluting fuel in the nation’s future electricity mix.
The CEA’s analysis shows that India may be able to exceed
one of its 2015 Paris Agreement commitments — reaching 40 percent of installed capacity from non-fossil fuel sources.
But the report also sees annual carbon emissions from the power sector rising about
12 percent from levels expected in 2022 to 1.154 billion tons.
The report didn’t include an assessment of what that means for key India goal — cutting emissions intensity of gross domestic product by 35 percent from 2005 levels. The report identifies the intermittent nature of renewables as a limiting factor for its use and advocates for grid-scale battery storage.