India’s CO2 emission pathways to 2050: What role can renewables play?
Introduction
India is the world’s fourth largest economy (based on purchasing power parity) and third largest energy consumer, accounting for 5% of global primary energy supply, and responsible for 5% of global CO2 emissions in 2010 [1]. Its energy consumption and emissions are projected to increase rapidly in the next few decades due to expected growth in population and economic activity [2]. Therefore, emerging economies like India have to undertake deep emissions reductions in order to achieve adequate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mitigation that is needed to keep the world on track towards a 2 °C pathway. Though at present (in 2010) India’s per capita energy consumption (0.59 toe/capita) and per capita emissions (1.39 tCO2/capita) are lower than that of the world average of 1.86 toe/capita and 4.44 tCO2/capita respectively [1], the Indian government has recognised the importance of lowering the country’s GHG emissions as part of an international effort to limit global warming. India has stated voluntary targets to reduce its GHG emissions per unit of economic output by 20–25% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, as part of the Copenhagen Accord [3].
Renewable energy can contribute to global climate change mitigation if it is produced in a sustainable manner. It can play a critical role in decarbonising the Indian economy as India has a large amount of renewable resources such as solar, wind, hydro and biomass. In 2010 the top five countries for non-hydro renewable power capacity were the United States, China, Germany, Spain, and India [4]. India ranks sixth worldwide for total hydro capacity, with an existing capacity of more than 40 GW (including 37.4 GW of large-scale), and it added about 0.3 GW of small-scale hydro in 2010 for a cumulative small-scale hydro capacity of 2.9 GW at year-end; another 0.9 GW of small-scale hydro were under construction as of early 2011 [4].
India is the fifth worldwide in total existing wind power capacity and is rapidly expanding many forms of rural renewables such as biogas and solar PV [4]. Wind power potential in India was initially estimated to be 20 GW and later revised upwards to 65 GW by the Planning Commission of India [5]. According to the Indian wind energy association (INWEA), the on-shore wind potential is 65 GW, and the president of the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association has claimed that the total wind potential in the country is 100 GW [6].
India receives solar energy equivalent to over 5000 trillion kW h/year, which is far more than the total energy consumption of the country [7]. India’s production of solar modules increased from 9.5 MW in 1998–1999 to about 40 MW in 2004–2005, corresponding to a 4.2-fold rise in 6 years, which, although impressive, is lower than global growth in solar installed capacity in recent years [6].
Forests defined as woodlands with more than 10% crown cover occupy about 20% of the Indian land area [8]. In India, biomass resources are used for power generation through three general applications, including grid-connected biomass power plants, off-grid distributed biomass power applications, and cogeneration via sugar mills and other industries. India added about 0.3 GW of biomass power capacity in 2010 for a total of 3 GW at year-end [6]. India is one of the largest bio-fuel producers in Asia [9].
Though the above studies discus the potential of renewable sources for India, they were mostly carried out at resource or sector level. These studies did not analyse the cost competitiveness of these renewable resources under climate policy in a holistic manner by integrating supply and demand side. Many studies [6], [7], [8] have also noted that renewable energy sources in India are in abundance, which can fulfil the growing energy demand. The main obstacle to increase the share of renewable energy sources is the relatively high installation cost. However, with the advancement in technology, RES can be tapped in a cost effective and sustainable manner.
This paper analyses what role renewables can play to meet India’s CO2 emission mitigation pathways to 2050 in a global context using a multi-region global energy system cost optimisation model called TIAM_UCL, where India is represented as a separate region, and where all regions take on equal per capita CO2 emissions levels by 2050. There are several studies available in the literature using models for energy and climate policy analysis at different levels: at a global level [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], and at national levels [8], [15], [16], [17], [18]. Selection of an appropriate model depends on the research question as well as the type of insights we are interested to bring out from the analysis. For analysis of the implications of possible global climate change mitigation targets on Indian energy systems, the technology rich (bottom-up) multi-region global energy system model (TIAM-UCL) is an appropriate model, as it captures the interaction of the Indian energy system with rest of the world (for example energy resources trade). Further, TIAM-UCL can be used to carry out analysis in a holistic way by integrating supply and demand side of the energy systems.
The paper is divided into five sections. Following the Introduction, Section 2 briefly presents the TIAM-UCL global model and assumptions, Section 3 defines the scenarios modelled in TIAM-UCL for this paper, Section 4 presents the sectoral emissions under two low carbon scenarios and discusses the role of renewables to achieve the mitigation pathways based on the TIAM-UCL results, and finally Section 5 concludes the study.
Section snippets
TIAM-UCL
TIAM-UCL1 is a whole energy system model from energy resources to conversion to infrastructure to end-use sectors [12], [19]. It is a linear programming partial-equilibrium model that minimises total discounted energy system cost in the standard version and maximises societal welfare (the sum of consumer and producer surplus) in the elastic demand version, which is
Scenarios
In order to investigate what energy system changes India would undergo in a low-carbon pathway, and the contribution made by renewable energy, this study analyses three scenarios:
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A Reference Scenario (Ref) with no CO2 emissions constraint (in this scenario, India’s emissions increase from just below 2 gtco2 in 2010 to almost 8 gtco2 in 2050).
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A first Low Carbon Scenario (LC1) with an emissions constraint of about 2.4 GtCO2 by 2050, equating to about 1.3 tCO2 per capita, as part of a global CO2
Reference scenario
In the reference scenario, where no CO2 emissions constraint is applied, India’s emissions increase from just below 2 GtCO2 in 2010 to almost 8 GtCO2 in 2050 (Fig. 1). This quadrupling of emissions is driven by a combination of population increase (up by almost 50% by 2050) and economic development, with GDP per capita increasing over eight-fold between 2010 and 2050. Though the power sector is responsible for at least half of the emissions in 2010 its share decreases over time to 27% in 2050,
Conclusions
At present, about one third of the primary energy consumption in India is from renewable sources. The analysis shows that renewables can play an important role to decarbonise the Indian energy system under both low carbon scenarios, but with a greater role in LC2, where CCS is not allowed as a technology choice. Renewable energy accounts for 34% of total primary energy consumption in LC1 and 52% in LC2, in 2050.
Solar can generate about half of the electricity demand in LC2 in 2050. In the
Acknowledgements
This paper is written from the modelling work carried out under India’s GHG emissions pathways 2050 project funded by UK Government under AVOID research programme (www.avoid.net.uk). The TIAM-UCL model has been developed under UKERC Phase II project funded by Research Council UK Energy Programme.
The authors would like to thank the Indian energy experts for their valuable inputs and comments on draft results, whilst acknowledging that the methodology, results and conclusions remain their own
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