India to add record wind powee, photovoltaic (PV)

India will connect a record 35 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power capacity to its grid during the year ending March 2025, a senior official told Reuters, as it struggles to meet its 2030 clean energy target after falling short of a much-hyped renewables target for 2022.
The world’s fastest-growing major economy has prioritised coal to address a surge in energy demand in recent years, with coal-fired power output growth expected to outpace renewable power generation this year. Commissioning of large photovoltaic (PV) parks has slowed in recent years, causing solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation to grow at the slowest pace in six years during the first half of 2024.
However, India, the world’s third-largest solar photovoltaic (PV) producer, expects that to change from this fiscal year, when it will see new additions of 30 GW of solar capacity, Bhupinder Singh Bhalla, the top bureaucrat at India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, told Reuters.
The country will also add about 5 GW of new wind power capacity, he said.
India added a total of 10 GW of renewable capacity in April-August, the first five months of this fiscal year, taking its total to about 153 GW, government data showed.
“We cannot provide an exact figure for next year (2025-26), but we will definitely exceed this year’s capacity (addition),” Bhalla said on the sidelines of RE-Invest, India’s biggest renewable energy conference. The South Asian nation will need to add about 30% more clean capacity each year than the wind and solar additions planned for this fiscal year to meet its end-2030 target of increasing its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW, underscoring the challenges in meeting its clean energy targets.
Renewable energy minister Prahlad Joshi said financial institutions have pledged to provide $386 billion in financing for renewable projects by 2030, adding that clean energy developers have committed to increasing India’s non-fossil capacity by 570 GW.
Meanwhile, Indian conglomerates Reliance Industries committed 100 GW of additional renewable capacity by 2030, while Adani Green Energy committed 38.8 GW of capacity.