(LiveMint)
Changing weather patterns may negatively impact India’s renewable energy generation capacity, said developers and weather scientists. A recent research published in Nature Geoscience, which used 10 global climate models to investigate large-scale changes in wind power generation across the globe, indicated that there will be changes in wind power across Northern Hemisphere, with substantial regional variations.
Dr. K.J. Ramesh, director general of meteorology, India Meteorological Department, agrees: “The weather is bound to change due to climate change. When rainfall patterns are changing, the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall is changing, warming is changing, there will be appropriate changes in the wind regime as well.”
The findings could throw a spanner in the works of the world’s largest renewable energy programme launched by India, which seeks to produce 100 gigawatts (GW) from solar projects and 60GW from wind power plants by March 2022.
In fact, Hyderabad-based renewable energy firm Greenko Group said that in the past two years the company has faced certain headwinds in wind power generation. “In the average view, we are fine, but in the short-term, in the past two years or so, we have had a bad season. Normally, we don’t get to see two continuous years of bad seasons,” said Mahesh Kolli, founder, president and joint managing director, Greenko Group.
