India has increased the use of coal to generate electricity in a bid to prevent outages provoked by lower hydroelectricity output, as a boost in renewables is stumbling to maintain swiftness with record power need.
It is uncommon for India’s electricity usage to spike in August when temperatures are lower due to the annual monsoon that races between June and September. Need commonly rises in May, when Indians crank up air-conditioners to conquer the heat and industries function without rain-related troubles.
However, the driest August in more than a century has resulted in energy generation rushing to a record 162.7 billion kilowatt hours (units), a study by the Reuters news agency of data from the federal grid operator Grid India showed.
According to a Reuters analysis of government data, the share of coal in power output increased to 66.7 percent in August – the highest for the month in six years.
Lower showers led to the share of hydropower in widespread output dropping to 14.8 percent, compared with 18.1 percent in the same term last year.
The government has often supported the usage of coal, mentioning lower per capita emissions compared with richer countries and increasing renewable energy output.
Despite a higher need for coal, power plants have sliced imports by 24 percent to 17.85 million metric tonnes during the first four months of the fiscal year ending in March 2024, government data showed, due to a 10.7 percent growth in production by the state-run Coal India.
Lower imports by the world’s second-largest importer of the polluting fuel behind China have held international thermal coal costs depressed in recent months.
Reviewers and industry officials attribute the higher power usage to farmers utilizing more electricity to wash fields due to poor rain, intermittency of renewables, and rising cooling needs with warmer-than-usual temperatures.
Electricity supply plunged brief of need by 780 million units in August, the data showed, marking the highest deficit since April 2022, when India encountered its most alarming power cuts in six and a half years.
The share of coal in output increased to 74.2 percent in the eight months that ended in August, the Grid India data showed, compared with 72.9 percent in the same term the previous year and on route to a third successive annual growth. The share of hydro dropped from 10.9 percent to 9.2 percent.
Overall power generation has increased by more than 108 billion units this year, dwarfing an upsurge of about 16 billion units in renewable generation.
India failed to accomplish a target to install 175 GW in renewable energy by 2022 and has since said it would attempt to increase non-fossil capacity to 500 GW by 2030.
Reaching that target would need more than 43 GW more of non-fossil power every year, nearly three times the average non-fossil power addition over the last two years to July.
