Reduction in carbon dioxide emissions due to wind power generation in India

Climate change and global warming are the biggest problems mankind is facing at present. Anthropogenic generation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and deforestation are the main reasons for these problems. In the context of India till March 31st, 2017, the share of fossil fuel (coal, gas, and diesel) based power plants is 66.79% (218.33 GW) in the 326.85 GW of total power plant installed capacity of India. The share of coal, gas, and diesel based electric power plants in total power plant installed capacity of India are 58.79%, 7.74%, and 0.26% respectively. Out of India's total renewable energy installed capacity of 57.26 GW till March 31st, 2017, wind power plant installed capacity is 32.28 GW. Thus it proves that wind power plants are the best and favorable solution in the Indian renewable energy sector till now. Wind farms have contributed a lot in CO2 emission reduction in India. This paper is an attempt to quantify the amount of CO2 emissions that are mitigated due to wind farms in India, based on the electricity generated by them and the emission factor in past eleven years from April 2006 to March 2017. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel based power plants of India are also estimated for all India and five regions namely Northern Region (NR), Eastern Region (ER), Western Region (WR), North-Eastern Region (NER), and Southern Region (SR) of India, based on the past years electricity generation data from April 2006 to March 2017.