India’s renewable-energy story is beginning to expose an uncomfortable truth: producing clean electricity is only half the transition. The other half is getting that electricity to where it is needed. Without the latter, additions to solar and wind capacity can produce impressive statistics without delivering their full economic or environmental value. India has expanded its non-fossil electricity capacity at remarkable speed. But generation has moved faster than the infrastructure needed to carry it. Solar and wind projects can be completed relatively quickly; transmission networks require land, rights of way, regulatory clearances and coordination across multiple authorities.

The result is a growing structural mismatch between the speed at which electricity is produced and the speed at which it can be evacuated. This is more than an engineering inconvenience. It is a warning about the quality of India’s energy planning. Renewable power is inherently dependent on geography and timing. Some of the country’s richest solar and wind resources are concentrated in Gujarat and Rajasthan, while major centres of industrial and urban demand are elsewhere. Building generation without simultaneously building transmission amounts to creating an asset........

© The Statesman