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India might be short on many things, but sunlight isn't one of those, which makes the country a perfect place for solar power. There's starting to be some political support for the clean source of energy (India is currently very dependent on coal) up to the highest levels of government, with the new prime minister Narendra Modi wanting to use it as a way to bring power to the 400 million Indians who are currently lacking access to electricity. Modi … has set a goal of 100 gigawatts of solar capacity, which would be a big jump from the 4.1 gigawatts that are currently connected to the grid. At about $1 per watt, that is estimated to cost about $94 billion, a substantial sum in any country, and even more so in India.
But solar in India is also starting to attract the attention of businesspeople with deep pockets, like Japan's Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, a very large global telecommunication and technology company (with stakes in SoftBank Mobile in Japan, Sprint in the U.S., Alibaba in China, etc). He is said to want to invest $20 billion over the next 10 years, working with Bharti Enterprises Pvt and Foxconn Technology Group, to build about 20 gigawatts of new solar capacity in the country. This investment alone could represent about 1/5 of Modi's solar target.
India has two times more sunshine than Japan and construction costs for solar parks that are half those of Japan, Son said. "Twice the sunshine, half the cost; that means four times more efficient," Son said. "So it makes a lot of sense to create large-scale solar power generation."
The solar panels will probably be manufactured in India, and sites in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh states are being considered.
Price per installed watt of solar has been falling sharply for the last 10 years. Projects of this scale will accelerate that. Time to short coal stocks?
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 28 2015, @02:00AM
The question isnt necessarily about shorting coal stocks, but if this could actually happen without dirty energy fucking it up by leaning on politicians.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Sunday June 28 2015, @06:53AM
All current energy is dirty. Even solar has production and battery pollution. Hydro-electricity, considered one of the most "clean" vastly messes with environmental ecologies.
No one really gives a fuck about the environmental harms -- Virtually everyone that says otherwise still buys dirty energy rather than doing without "unclean" power.
So, the question isn't if dirty energy fucks it up, but if dirty energy companies will buy in yet at this level of profitability. It will be the "old" energy companies that support "new" cleaner energy.
Inspect your tinfoil hat for holes: Those who stand to benefit from solar are also those who aren't benefiting from cleaner nuclear power (since it's more expensive to build).
I too hope "dirty energy" like solar and it's batteries don't fuck up cleaner energies like nuclear... because I'm not an uneducated plebeian who believes politicians dictate politics.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday June 28 2015, @11:49AM
I voluntarily pay an extra high "Green" tarriff for my electricity (which is my only possible source of energy) purely voluntarily. My provider is pushing towards more provision of green energy, and whilst I know more than 50% of my electrons are from dirty original sources rather than clean ones, at least I'm helping justify keeping the green ones active, and the R&D into expanding them. So not everyone fails to put their money where their mouth is.
And I too would dearly like to see muchos dollars invested into a nuclear future - in particular in making Thorium practical for metro-scale use. It clearly works in the small scale. (Actually, I'd like to see muchos euros invested in it. I'd only be too happy if Europe could take the lead, and then have a product they could sell at a nice profit to the US, rather than the other way round.)
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