New Delhi: With the Modi government ’s mega push for clean energy generation capacities, India is set to overtake the European Union in expansion of new renewable energy generation capacity for the first time, according to the International Energy Agency IEA ).India's move to address the financial health of its power utilities and tackle grid-integration issues drive a more optimistic forecast, the Paris-based agency said in its latest report Renewables 2017. “By 2022, India renewable capacity will more than double. This growth is enough to overtake renewable expansion in the European Union for the first time,” the report said.The IEA added that Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) and wind together represent 90 per cent of India's capacity growth as auctions yielded some of the world's lowest prices for both technologies. The Modi government is working on an ambitious plan to increase the installed base of domestic renewable energy capacity to 175 Gigawatt by 2022.The IEA’s latest report on renewables market analysis and forecast said new solar PV capacity grew by 50 per cent globally last year, with China accounting for almost half of the global expansion. For the first time, solar PV additions rose faster than any other fuel, surpassing the net growth in coal."We see renewables growing by about 1,000 GW by 2022, which equals about half of the current global capacity in coal power, which took 80 years to build," said Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA. "What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV. We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022," he added.This year's renewable forecast by IEA is 12 per cent higher than last year, thanks mostly to solar PV upward revisions in China and India. Three countries - China, India and the United States - will account for two-thirds of global renewable expansion by 2022. Total solar PV capacity by then would exceed the combined total power capacities of India and Japan today.The IEA report noted that the deployment in solar PV and wind last year was accompanied by record-low auction prices, which fell as low as 3 cents per kwh (or kilowatt hour). “Low announced prices for solar and wind were recorded in a variety of places, such as India, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Chile. These announced contract prices for solar PV and wind power purchase agreements are increasingly comparable or lower than generation cost of newly built gas and coalpower plants,” the IEA said in a statement.China remains the undisputed leader of renewable electricity capacity expansion over the forecast period with over 360 GW of capacity coming online, or 40 per cent of the global total. China's renewables growth is largely driven by concerns about air pollution and capacity targets that were outlined in the country's 13th five-year plan to 2020. China already exceeded its 2020 solar PV target three years ahead of time and is set to achieve its onshore wind target in 2019. Still, the growing cost of renewable subsidies and grid integration issues remain two important challenges to further expansion.Overall, in power generation, renewable electricity is expected to grow by more than a third by 2022 to over 8,000 terawatt hours, which is equivalent to the total power consumption of China, India and Germany combined. By then, renewables will account for 30 per cent of power generation, up from 24 per cent in 2016. IEA said the growth in renewable generation will be twice as large as that of gas and coal combined. Though coal remains the largest source of electricity generation in 2022, renewables close the generation gap with coal by half in just five years.