With that in mind, let’s look at the role of renewables within the Indian power sector. Today, India has about 90 gigawatts of installed renewable capacity, which positions India fourth in the world after China, the U.S., and Germany, —but importantly, it is experiencing the fastest growth among the group and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Indian’s position move up the ranks quickly.
Now, what that means is that India has a very mature system in both wind and solar. We have high existing installed capacities of both wind and solar, a large trained workforce giving us a whole ecosystem of project execution and asset management capabilities. India has therefore a great platform off of which to build the capacity growth of renewables in the future.
Another critical factor is that renewables have become significantly cheaper than coal based power, which has really been the mainstay of Indian power consumption for so many years. In most of the recent comparable power auctions, coal has been at about 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour, wind being almost 40 percent cheaper than that at about 4 cents a kilowatt hour, and solar has been even cheaper at less than half the price of coal.
So at this point, and as we look at the incremental 1 trillion units of power that has to be generated in the next 10 years, more than two thirds of that is likely to come from renewables.
Additionally, the government of India has set a target to achieve 450 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030, which reflects a 5 time growth as compared to the 90 gigawatts of currently commissioned capacity today. Importantly, while two-thirds of the incremental demand for power would be satisfied by renewables, by 2030, still renewables would account for only one-third of total power generation capacity.
Now, where does ReNew fit into India’s renewable story? ReNew is India’s largest company in terms of renewable capacity, with close to 10 gigawatts of total contracted and commissioned capacity. Approximately 5.5 gigawatts is commissioned and the remaining 4.5 gigawatts is comprised of contracted projects that are in various stages of development and construction, and will be commissioned over the next two years.
ReNew’s approach to growth is mostly organic in nature, which means that we’ve actually built most of these assets ourselves. We are truly differentiated from this perspective, including on our on the ground development, construction and operations. This provides us with a very deep and valuable understanding of project execution issues in different parts of the country, including the pitfalls that could adversely affect and impact project timelines in different states.
Given our leadership position in India, we are often looked to as a thought-leader, and importantly, are able to contribute to discussions with the government in developing its new policies and auctions, and in areas such as storage and grid management, et cetera.
We have a significant, broad presence across virtually all key parts of India geographically, as well as a diversified supplier base for both wind and solar. We have diversified to ensure that we are not overcommitted to any single technology, supplier, or vendor.
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