A ray of sunshine: Solar industry gets fresh push from PLI scheme

India is a signatory to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. As part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), India has three quantitative climate change goals viz.

reduction in the emissions intensity of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 33 to 35 percent by 2030 from 2005 level, achieving about 40 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030 and creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

While India seems to be progressing well to meet the above commitments, the need to ensure that reliance on renewable sources of energy has become more important than ever. Indian Government has been undertaking various initiatives for development of non-conventional sources of energy especially electricity.

One such initiative was National Solar Mission started back in the year 2010, with a target of generating 20 GW of electricity through solar energy by 2022 and establish India as a global leader in solar energy. The target of 20 GW was later increased to 100 GW. India currently produces around 39 GW of electricity through solar energy (as on February 2021).