India remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the country’s electricity system, and is only second to South Africa in coal reliance. However, India is making progress in solar energy. In the last decade, India has made significant progress in solar energy with generation growing by 45 times to reach 5 percent of its power in 2022.
According to Global Electricity Review, wind and solar have reduced the share of coal power in G20 countries since the Paris Agreement. It said pathways aligned with 1.5C require rapid reductions in coal power this decade. But the report said transformation is not happening fast enough for a pathway aligned with 1.5C.
Ember, the energy think tank behind the Global Electricity Review, data analysis stated that wind and solar in G20 countries reached a combined share of 13 percent of electricity in 2022, up from 5 percent in 2015. The share of wind power, in this period, doubled and the share of solar power quadrupled. As such, coal power fell from 43 percent of G20 electricity in 2015 to 39 percent in 2022. But shares of other sources of electricity remained broadly stable, with fluctuations of just 1 – 2 percentage points.
Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior analyst at Ember, said replacing coal power with wind and solar is the closest thing the world has to a silver bullet for the climate. She believes solar and wind power also bring down electricity costs and reduce health-harming pollution. “Power sector decarbonization is the single biggest action needed to cut emissions. G20 countries are mostly already moving towards a cleaner electricity system but this now needs to be accelerated.”
The decline in coal power needs to accelerate even faster this decade. The IPCC said majority of this fall needs to happen in G20 countries, which were responsible for 93 percent of the world’s total coal generation in 2022. The absolute generation of coal power has increased as countries turn to coal to meet rising demand.
Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka explained that the cheapest and fastest way to achieve cleaner energy will be through the rapid roll out of proven technologies like wind and solar, and not through gambling on unproven technologies like fossil fuels with carbon capture.