Overcoming barriers to solar and wind energy adoption in two Asian giants: India and Indonesia

Solar and wind electricity generation technologies have become cost competitive and account for a growing share of global investment in new electricity generation capacity. Both India and Indonesia have ambitious targets for adoption of these technologies, and India has an impressive current rate of uptake. Substantial obstacles exist, however, including the entrenched positions of coal and other fossil fuels, regulatory barriers to market access, and weak abilities of electricity utilities to manage intermittent renewables. This paper reviews these obstacles and discusses strategies to overcome them. We focus on the use of reverse auction processes able to deliver low-price solar and wind contracts, as are being successfully employed in India, on tax and subsidy reform options, on regulatory and incentive-design strategies, on approaches to bolster grid management capacities, and on the importance of minimizing protectionist barriers. Our analysis covers both small-scale and large-scale systems.