wind turbines in background of historic site in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

Empowering India's clean energy transition

About

India is actively moving away from fossil fuels and working to decarbonize its economy by expanding its clean energy portfolio. To ensure the reliability and affordability of this emerging electricity system, it is essential to establish robust planning methods. This ensures decision-makers have the necessary resources to ensure reliable electricity supply and minimize potential economic and socio-environmental impacts during the transition to clean energy. In collaboration with the World Resources Institute (WRI), we are developing a multi-model framework to produce key information crucial for policy and implementation decisions at national and state levels.

Approach

To ensure long-term investment and integrated resource plans and processes, our project contains three phases. Initially, our team is focusing on developing modeling tools that yield valuable and accessible data outputs. First, we are assessing resource adequacy in India’s increasingly decarbonized power system and developing capacity credit metrics for renewable energy zones and state-level portfolios to help system planners plan for regional energy needs. Secondly, we are creating India-wide electricity planning and operations models utilizing an open-source modeling platform called GridPath, along with a bottom-up electricity demand model known as RUMI, developed by our partner, Prayas. These models incorporate datasets developed using our Multi-criteria Analysis for Planning Renewable Energy (MapRE) tool. The resulting open-source datasets, models, and analyses provide critical support for national and state-level planning and capacity building in the final phase of this project. We are directly engaging with national-level institutions while closely collaborating with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to enhance capacity and resources at the state level. This holistic approach aims to empower decision-makers and stakeholders at all levels with the necessary tools and resources for effective long-term planning and investment in India's evolving energy landscape.

Partners

This project is a collaboration with the World Resource Institute (WRI), Prayas, and Blue Marble Analytics.

Header photo: Daniel Bachhuber (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)