India government-owned NTPC Renewable Energy has been given approval by India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to build a 4.75GW solar project in Gujarat, India.
On Monday (12 July) MNRE gave the go-ahead to the facility, which NTPC claims will be India’s largest solar plant to date. The New Delhi-based company also plans to generate commercial scale green hydrogen from the project.
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As part of its green energy plans, NTPC has committed to building 60GW of renewable energy capacity by 2032 and has a current installed power generation capacity of 66GW across 70 projects, with a further 18GW under construction.
The Indian government had pledged to build 100GW of solar by 2022 but that figure is now unlikely to be met. It has been replaced with the target of deploying 450GW of renewables – 300GW of it solar – to be operational by the end of this decade.
In June, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said the country’s solar share will rise to 31% of its energy mix by 2040, compared with just 4% today. Coal is expected to fall from 68% of the energy mix to 34% over the same period.
NCPT has also commissioned 25MW floating solar farm in southern state of Andhra Pradesh, with a 100MW floating solar project also scheduled for the state of Telangana.