Synopsis: NTPC & ONGC have come together to set up offshore wind energy projects.
NTPC Limited, a power production firm, and ONGC Limited, an oil and gas exploration company, have announced cooperation to establish offshore wind energy projects, according to media sources. Last year, the two corporations inked an MOU. Other renewable energy industries including storage and e-mobility are also covered in the partnership agreement.
By 2032, NTPC intends to build 60 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. To put this in context, NTPC now has 66 gigawatts of installed capacity, with coal-based power generation accounting for 46.6 gigawatts.
The solar and wind energy capacity for the corporation is just over 1 gigawatt. It recently won rights to develop large-scale solar power projects through competitive auctions.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) aims to build 5 gigawatts of offshore capacity by 2022 and 30 gigawatts by 2030. However, progress has been extremely slow in this area. In 2010, the Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET) began a survey to evaluate India’s offshore wind energy potential.
The survey was projected to take two to three years to complete. India’s offshore wind energy legislation was enacted in 2015, and there have been numerous reports indicating the start of the country’s first offshore wind project, but nothing has materialized.
MNRE expressed interest in establishing an offshore wind energy project in 2018. Several major Indian and international corporations expressed interest, but no more movement has been observed since then.
There were reports in 2019 that a tender for India’s first-ever offshore project auction will be launched soon. The project was scheduled to be built in Gujarat, in western India, and receive more than $900 million in government funding. Again, no progress on this project has been reported.
The recent announcement of cooperation between the two public-sector companies is unlikely to result in any actual project development in the foreseeable future.
Offshore wind projects are substantially more expensive than onshore wind projects, although being far more efficient. Subsidized offshore projects are currently unable to compete with solar power tariffs that are at an all-time low.
