India will all set to become the largest market for utility-scale battery storage by 2040 as renewables show immunity to the COVID-19 pandemic to emerge as a cost-effective choice and will drive coal into a corner, as stated by the International Energy Agency.

The IEA’s ‘World Energy Outlook 2020’ which was released on earlier says globally, power generation from renewables has been the only foremost source of energy that sustained to grow this year. In contrast, advancement in coal use in India and other South and Southeast Asian economies presented a marked drop and will not be sufficient to offset declines elsewhere.

Solar PV (photovoltaic) projects become the leading solution for meeting global growth in electricity demand, with storage playing an increasingly vital role in ensuring the flexible operation of power systems, says the Outlook. In contrast, coal consumption may never regain pre-pandemic levels.

“Solar energy is already contributing around 2.8% of global electricity and if trends were to continue, by 2030, solar will become most important source of energy for electricity production in great part of the world,” power minster R K Singh told the third assembly of the International Solar Alliance.

India, which is working on adding 100 GW (giga watt) solar capacity by 2023, is also shifting focus towards storage-based projects to tackle the intermittency of power from solar PV. In month of May, Goldman Sachs-backed ReNew Power won the world’s first tender for round-the-clock supply of green power quoting a tariff of 4 US cents per unit. And in February, Greenko and ReNew won 900 MW and 300 MW packages of a 1200 MW storage-based projects auctioned by SECI, the government agency implementing the National Solar Mission.

The Outlook says in the ‘stated policy scenarios’ (STEPS), renewables meet about 80% of the growth in global electricity generation over the next decade, overtaking coal by 2025 as the primary means of producing electricity.

In the ‘sustainable development strategy’ (SDS) scenario, the combined share of solar PV and wind in global generation rises from 8% in 2019 to almost 30% in 2030. By 2040, the share of coal in total primary energy supply dips below 20% for the first time in modern energy history. In the SDS, coal fares much worse, and its share falls below 10%.