How India lost nearly a third of solar power potential to foul air

Air pollution is not just taking a toll on health but also holding India back from achieving its solar energy goals, says a study carried out by Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. It says the country lost 29% of its utilisable ‘global horizontal irradiance potential’, or the radiation that generates solar power, due to air pollution between 2001 and 2018. This gap in harnessing potential solar energy is equivalent to an annual loss of $245-835 million.

IIT considered both the ‘soiling effect’, or presence of solid dust, and ‘atmospheric attenuation’, or the scattering of light due to gaseous pollutants in the air, to assess pollution. The study asserts that India could have generated more clean energy and relied less on fossil fuels for power had it met its clean air targets. As it is, the study says, urban haze caused an 11.5% loss in solar radiation falling on a surface in Delhi during 2016-17, causing a loss of about $20 million.

“Successful implementation of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) and complete mitigation of household emissions through the supply of cleaner fuel for domestic use and rural electrification would allow India to generate a surplus electricity of 6-16 TWh (terawatt hour) per year from the existing solar power installed capacity in 2018. This translates to an economic benefit of $325-845 million annually,” says the study entitled ‘Cleaner air would enhance India’s annual solar energy production by 6-28 TWh’ written by Dr Sagnik Dey, Dilip Ganguly, Somnath Baidya Roy and others from the Centre for Atmospheric Science, IIT-D.

To achieve its goal, the study urges for the “successful implementation” of three government programmes: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Grameen Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) for reducing household emission, and NCAP to tackle ambient air pollution. The study asserts that PMUY and DDUGJY can generate a surplus of 3-8 TWh per year, worth $163-425, while meeting the NCAP target would generate another 3-8 TWh per year.

The study pointed out that the combined benefits from these three policies were worth $325-845 million, or almost the equivalent of the budget allocation of $1,100 million for PMUY and $42.6 million for the first two years of NCAP.

It also estimates the potential benefits of India meeting WHO’s guidelines on clean air of 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metres at a surplus of 10-28 TWh per year, resulting in incremental revenue of $505-1,425 million annually. The study also said that generation of this surplus energy would be more pronounced in the eastern and north-eastern power grids because the population in those regions relied extensively on fossil fuel and biomass burning for day-to-day activities.