MUMBAI: The majority of India’s planned renewable energy infrastructure will be exposed to escalating climate hazards, putting about US$55bil of physical assets at risk of damage by the end of this decade, according to a new study.
Some 239GW of proposed solar, wind and hydropower capacity across 10 Indian states – about 90% of the total – face high or critical vulnerabilities to compounding weather events like extreme floods, Zurich Insurance Group AG said in an assessment.
“It hits the balance sheet,” Mark Fletcher, head of Zurich Resilience Solutions for Asia Pacific, said in an interview.
“If your solar panel is less efficient, you’re generating less revenue. If your wind farm is blown down and you have four or five turbines damaged, you have a business interruption on the revenue side, but you also have a direct cost to fix that.”
The findings underscore the scale of the challenge for India – the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter – to transition its vast energy system, even as it makes rapid progress toward a target to raise the share of electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel sources to 60% by 2035. — Bloomberg
