By Lorna Pelly

This article was originally published on Forum for the future and is republished with permission.

No-one would dispute that the Indian government is not addressing their ever increasing energy gap. Since Modi came to power, perhaps the single biggest headline announcement on energy has been the massive increase in ambition of the country’s existing renewable energy targets. Plans now include deploying an additional 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind by 2022 as well as smaller increases in biomass and hydro targets. These targets form the basis of India’s INDC pledge, submitted at the International Climate Change talks in Paris in December 2015, to generate 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

Modi’s renewable strategy so far has no doubt been focused on expanding renewable energy capacity through explosive growth at a utility scale, rather than considering local level deployment. In contrast to the 100 GW being targeted from grid connected solar projects, just 3 GW of off-grid solar is being targeted by 2022.  The vast majority of the planned new solar is to be delivered via ultra-mega size solar parks, receiving a lot of support through land acquisition, planning and finance.

The problem with this approach is it still pushes the big centralised energy system, which is now proven to be flawed in being fit for a future that can effectively succeed through climate change. Crucially, it still relies on a functional national grid, which India currently lacks.

Large scale, nationalised systems take years to change. They are also high risk, high expense, inflexible and wasteful.

With a failing grid that needs major investment, it is pretty clear that the only way to get electricity access to the 220 million in rural villages in the immediate term is to skip the grid for now and set up local scale, decentralised energy systems. And these can be renewable energy systems, addressing the carbon and air quality impacts. And they can connect back onto the grid in the future, should the grid be extended. And they can help new investors and developers connect with villages, potentially providing jobs. And the provision of electricity can help lift people out of poverty. The local scale approach may initially seem like more work for less energy, but the benefits are considerably more extensive and systems far more resilient.

So is India now the new hot-house for decentralised, renewable energy? Well, not really, not yet. There are a lot of developers and NGOs working on this, but regulations and understanding still vary a lot between states, projects are still pilots, access to finance is still a problem and there hasn’t really been a big push from central government (still seeming to dream of a fully functioning national grid).

But when the rationale couldn’t be more evident, and the market couldn’t get any bigger, and the need couldn’t be more urgent, then something has to give.

In some recent research we conducted, one of the common bits of feedback we were given is the lack of a common platform for decentralised renewable energy; the need for a concerted effort between organisations and developers and a shared narrative and vision to illustrate the potential.  

So this is want we intend to do.

Our work at Forum in other countries and other sectors has taught us time and time again about the value of collaboration. The scale at which decentralised renewable energy needs to be deployed in India cannot be achieved by any single policy, or pilot programme or any organisation working alone. We need to create a whole movement, a national conversation that appeals to the hearts and minds of politicians, investors and communities. Over the next six months, we will be working with a group of developers, researchers, politicians, investors and NGOs in Odisha to create a vision of what could be achieved with scaled deployment of decentralised, renewable energy, to understand the technical feasibility but also to consider the social and environmental benefits often overlooked.

India’s energy gap is big, but so too is their opportunity to show the world the extensive benefits of decentralised, renewable energy and to once again leap-frog the mistakes of others straight to a better outcome.