India’s Ministry of Power announced that the country seeks to phase out diesel use in agriculture and replace it with renewable energy by 2024, as reported by Reuters on February 11. In February 2020, the Indian government announced an incentive program to encourage farmers to use solar power instead of diesel-fired irrigation pumps. According to government data, diesel makes up nearly 40% of India’s overall refined fuel consumption, with the agriculture industry as one of its major users.

India was the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2020, emitting 7.14m tonnes annually. At the COP26 climate summit in 2021, President Modi has stated that India intends to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2070. To reach this goal, the country intends to have invested at least USD15bn in renewable energy by 2022. New investment in the country’s clean energy sector was USD6.2bn in 2020, USD9.3bn in 2019, and USD10.8bn in 2018, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report. Due to the stringent lockdown enforced in reaction to COVID-19, India only added 3,239 megawatts (MW) of solar power in 2020, down 56% from the 7,346 MW installed in 2019. By the end of 2021, India had accumulated 49.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity and 151.4 GW of renewable capacity.

Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-hopes-replace-diesel-with-green-energy-its-farms-by-2024-2022-02-11/

https://www.cdmfund.org/30108.html

https://cn.nikkei.com/industry/ienvironment/46540-2021-11-02-09-54-47.html

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/world-59130626

https://solar.ofweek.com/2020-03/ART-8110-2600-30433376.html