Citing that affordable storage of renewable energy was one of the major challenges before India to achieve energy transition, Union Minister of New and Renewable Energy, Raj Kumar Singh, on Friday said that till the storage cost decreases, India needs to expand its nuclear energy capacity and develop the ecosystem accordingly.

Singh was speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a conference, ‘Energy Transition in India – Road Travelled and Opportunity Ahead’ organised by Gujarat energy department as part of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, 2024.

Singh inaugurated the two-day conference in the presence of state Energy and Finance Minister Kanu Desai in Gandhinagar. The conference is being attended by around 250 people in the power and renewable energy sectors of India and abroad.

Asked what challenges India faces in achieving energy transition, Singh said the challenge is three-fold.

Citing affordable storage as one of the three challenges, Singh said, “Round-the-clock renewable energy can be provided only if we can store it. The manufacturing (capacity) in storage is less in the world. Therefore, its cost is very high. To increase the storage capacity in India, we have got production-linked incentive.”

“Till the storage cost does not go down, we cannot give round-the-clock renewable energy. In that case, we need coal or nuclear (energy)… We need to expand our nuclear energy and then we can have round-the-clock green energy. Then we will reduce coal (based power)… For nuclear energy, we need to build ecosystem,” he added.

According to Singh, India’s installed capacity of nuclear energy is 7000 MW and they want to increase upto 100 GW.

In this context, Singh said that India is also working on green hydrogen fuel sector and will become a global leader in manufacturing the same.

The second challenge he cited was availability of equipment to build manufacturing capacity to make the ‘Make in India’ model work. Singh said the government is aiming to have solar cell module built in India. The third challenge Singh cited was expanding the network of transmission lines in the country.

On the impact of climate change and energy transition, Singh said India’s per capita emission is among the lowest in the world. “Our per capita emission is about 2.19 tonne per annum. The global average is 6.8 tonne per capita per annum. So, ours is one of the lowest in the world. Despite that we have emerged as a leader in energy transition. We are the only country that has achieved its nationally-determined contribution nine years in advance.”

On phasing out coal-based power plants in India, Singh said, “I call it a diversionary topic floated by developed countries. Because it does not matter where the emission is coming from. What is important is who is emitting how much… India is emitting one-third of the global average. In legacy emission, 80 per cent contribution is from developed countries. Our contribution is 3 per cent while India has 17 per cent population (of the world).”