New Delhi: The government has spent Rs 2,579 crore on renewable energy projects and schemes in the first six months of the current financial year (2018-19), roughly a half of the Rs 5,146 crore outlay for the sector budgeted in this year’s budget, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy ( MNRE ) said in a report.Of the total budgeted expenditure, Rs 3,762 crore was allocated for grid-interactive renewable power projects . This included Rs 2,045 crore for solar power, Rs 750 crore for wind energy and Rs 600 crore for the ambitious green energy corridor project.The budgetary allocation for the total Off-Grid, distributed and decentralized renewable power stood at Rs 1,036.48 crore, where the budget for solar power was Rs 848.50 crore and biogas programme was Rs 135.00 crore.The government has set a target of achieving 175 Gigawatt of installed clean energy generation capacity by March 2022. This includes 100 Gw from solar, 60 Gw from wind, 10 Gw from biomass based systems and 5 Gw from small hydro projects.“A total of 2,905 MW of renewable power capacity has been added during the year 2018-19, taking cumulative installed RE capacity to 72.68 GW as on September 2018 comprising 34.61 GW from Wind power, 24.03 GW from Solar Power, 9.54 GW from Bio Power and 4.50 GW Small Hydro Power,” the ministry said in its report.According to a recent report by Bloomberg NEF, India has become the largest market globally for auction of new renewable energy generation projects. Its renewables auctioned capacity has increased by 68 percent since 2017, and clean energy investments, mostly related to solar power projects, added up to $7.4 billion in the first half of 2018, BNEF said.For the last financial year ended March 2018, the total budgetary allocation for renewable energy stood at Rs 5,472 crore. This was, however, revised down 25 per cent to Rs 4,080 crore.