Search

India has tremendous potential for generating clean electricity through Renewable Energy Sources (RES) namely Hydro, Wind and Solar. This potential has been duly recognized and shows India׳s consciousness for reducing carbon footprint as a developing nation. Government of India with an aim to promote clean energy launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) on 11th January 2010, which is one of the eight missions under National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC–2008). This mission visions to install 22,000 MW through grid connected and off grid power plants. Achieving an installed capacity of this quantum is a task full of challenges. To list the possible challenges and suggest a way forward, there is a need to study solar energy sector in India in the past, which has motivated the authors to discuss the evolution of solar energy in India since independence. Through this paper authors have tried to outline the journey of solar energy in India since 1950 till date and highlight the potential issues as barriers and challenges which could impact the ambitious mission taken up by Government of India. This study will help decision makers and various stakeholders to understand the current status, barriers and challenges for better planning and management in the field of solar energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clean development mechanism (CDM) could play an important role in the power generation sector of developing countries and emerging economies by providing additional revenue to support the diffusion of renewable energy sources (RES). This paper investigates the contribution of the CDM to deployment of renewable electricity projects in China and India, and highlights the main potentialities and limitations of this mechanism for their support. The outcome of our analysis shows many differences and similarities in the way and scale of CDM projects for renewable electricity generation have been implemented in the two countries. In both cases, the CDM has made a contribution to greening investments in the power generation sector, which is still largely dominated by subcritical coal-fuelled power plants. Nonetheless, some major problems still remain and they are mainly related to the distribution of projects across different technologies and to the environmental integrity of the mechanism. In view of the likely revision of the CDM in the post-Kyoto period, we find that the differentiation of the credit generation rate of different project categories could bring some level of improvement without significantly altering the current system functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]