CURRENT TRENDS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY: AN OVERVIEW
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7324/IJERAT.2018.3257Keywords:
Environmental issues, Growth of renewable energy, Renewable Energy Sources.Abstract
The energy system based on renewable, on one hand, presents a unique opportunity to overcome the current challenges regarding the global climate warming and on the other hand, it helps tremendously in increasing economic growth, creating new employment avenues and causing a lot of enhancement of human quality and health. Hence in recent times for the sake of energy security, access to clean energy and climate change, the role of renewable energy has become very significant. This paper overviews the current trends of renewable energy globally and particularly in India as well as their growth and environmental issues. Here all forms of renewable energy such as wind energy, hydropower, solar energy, biomass energy and geothermal energy have been discussed in detail regarding its technologies, their future potentials, and scopes particularly in the context of India. The current installed capacity of wind power in India is of 22645 MW and it is expected to grow up to 60000 MW by 2020. In hydropower, it has the potential of producing 84000 MW with 60% load factor which is globally one of the largest. It has been observed that it has a huge potential for development of solar energy. Currently, Govt. of India has made an ambitious target to achieve 175 GW of clean energy through renewables by 2022 in which 100 GW only through solar energy. India is also very rich in biomass and it can provide more employment particularly in rural areas as it is widely available, carbon-neutral and renewable. Currently, Govt. of India took cognizance in that respect and started massive drive and actions to develop this form of energy more efficiently so that the larger mass of people can derive maximum benefits. The potential of geothermal energy is estimated around 10000 MW and further studies and explorations are still going on particularly in the Puga Valley of Ladakh as these locations are lying in the low surface temperature range from 350 to 980 C which is most suitable for the direct heating application.
