India’s push for renewable energy post the Paris Agreement on climate change has caught the eye of China, with its government shifting its Indian investments from coal to solar energy in India.
"Chinese investments in Indian coal projects have been declining. At the same time, Chinese investments in India on solar projects are slowly increasing," Jai Sharda, a founding partner with equity research Indian firm Equitorials, told IANS.
There are reports that GLC-Poly energy, China's top solar module manufacturer, is in talks with India's Essel group to set up a solar module manufacturing facility in India this year, he added.
Under the Paris agreement of December 2015, 197 countries agreed to cut emissions in a bid to keep the global average rise in temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.
India has committed to generate up to 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022.
Some countries contributed to this change by reducing support for high emission projects like coal-fired power plants and shifting towards renewable energy, said the report.
China's overseas investments have slowed down in 2016 after the Paris Agreement, as per the just-released report of the Global Environmental Institute (GEI).
The GEI report shows that between 2001 and 2016, China was involved in 240 coal power projects in countries along the belt, with a total generating capacity of 251 gigawatts.
The report adds that India received support from Chinese companies for building close to 129,540 MW worth of coal power capacity.
As per the government reports, India has a combined renewable energy capacity of 57 GW until March’2017.
Over the next five years, the country hopes to grow that to 175 GW, mostly helped by solar, which has seen a significant drop in tariffs in recent months.
