Why Cop27 is critical for India to meet its green energy goals and raise funding

India has made great strides in ramping up its use of green energy, but the country is falling short of its targets.

To help meet its renewable energy goals, New Delhi is pushing for greater financial support from wealthier nations at the Cop27 climate summit, which began on Sunday in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt.

“India would need committed help to meet its targets,” says Shailendra Singh Rao, founder and managing director of Creduce, a climate change and carbon asset management services company in Ahmedabad in the western India state of Gujarat.

“Climate finance is to be paid by developed countries — a sum of $100 billion per year — to developing countries. This was committed way back in Cop15. Not a single year [has] the target has been matched.”

India will require $223bn of investment to meet its solar and wind installations by 2030, according to a report by BloombergNEF.

The South Asian country has set a target of 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by the end of this year, with most of it coming from solar.

It is likely to achieve about 70 per cent to 75 per cent of the target, global analytics firm Crisil said. India is aiming to achieve 500 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030.

Pranav Master, director of Crisil Market Intelligence and Analytics put the gap down to lower rooftop solar capacity due to implementation challenges.

“Nevertheless, this achievement is noteworthy, given that India's renewable energy capacity rose about 3.5 times from 2014 to 2022,” he said.

There has been mounting pressure on India — which is home to some of the world’s most polluted cities — from developed countries to phase out the use of coal and reduce its carbon footprint. The world’s third-largest economy is set to become the most populous country next year.