| |December 202019s this year began, the whole world was preparing to enter a new chapter of growth primarily driven by customer centricity, increased demand, collaboration, cost competitiveness and most importantly, innovation and technological integration. Within the first few months, the ongoing pandemic caused a major disruption to all the sectors and businesses, bringing the world to a standstill. There is a lot of uncertainty in adjudging the way forward for the industry. It is how we react and work around the current situation that will decide how quickly we will meet our long-term objective of 450 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2030.LOOKING BACK AT THE SOLAR SECTOR ­ 2020There has been massive growth in solar power capacity during the last decade. Solar has now become the fastest-growing source of renewable energy in the world. Earlier, the swift installations were mainly due to policy support and a sharp reduction in technological cost heads and growing environmental concerns. However, with the economic downturn induced by the outbreak of the ongoing pandemic, demand from various segments has seen a high degree of downturn due to the financial uncertainties faced by the customers. According to the market reports, India's new solar installations fell by 80% year-over-year (YoY) to 438 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity in Q3 2020 from 2,177 MW added in Q3 2019. The installed capacity totaled 1.73 gigawatts (GW), during the first nine months of 2020, and there was a 68% downturn compared to 5.48 GW added in the same period of 2019. Additionally, several project deadlines have been pushed to Q4 2020, and the commissioning timelines for many projects have been rescheduled to the first half of 2021 due to Pandemic. Impact of the ongoing pandemic and policies on the solar industryWhile the Government of India has plans of generating 100 GW of solar energy capacity by 2022, theimpetus has taken a beating in the pastyear. There have been several issues such as uncertainties around import duties and future tax rates on existing power purchase agreements that have dampened investor sentiments. We believe, with the imposition of safeguard duty on solar cells, the position has become evenmore difficult. The safeguard duty will only be justified, and the country can achieve this target, if the domestic industry is able to match cheap imports within the nextone and a half years. The main concern for all solar power suppliers revolves around the country's cheap tariffs, which are among the world's lowest. Another major challenge for the sector is the financial EXPECTATION FROM SOLAR SECTOR WITH THE NEW RISE OF 2021THOUGHT CENTRAL ABy Manoj Gupta, VP-Solar and Waste to Energy Business, Fortum India Pvt LtdMBBR technology employs thousands of polyethylene biofilm carriers operating in mixed motion within an aerated wastewater treatment basin
< Page 9 | Page 11 >