Why does India need to develop ultra mega projects?
India faces a severe electricity shortage that is seriously hampering its industrial growth and competitiveness. If India wants to sustain its current level of GDP growth (8-9 percent a year), it needs to add about 160,000 megawatts in generation capacity in the next decade. This means that India needs to more than double its current generation capacity of about 132,329 megawatts. Of India’s current generation capacity, more than 65 percent is from thermal power plants; some 83 percent of this (about 54 of the total) is coal-based power. Hydropower accounts for about 26 percent of capacity, while the remainder comes from nuclear power and from wind and other renewable sources of energy. The fuel mix of India’s generation capacity is expected to remain roughly the same in coming years, which means that the country will continue to depend heavily on coal-based power. India has a very low per capita consumption of electricity, at about 437 kilowatt hours a year, as compared to China (abou
