India is producing more green energy - but wasting a lot of it — SkimNews
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- India's installed renewable energy capacity hit 300GW — 54% of its total 552GW installed capacity — five years ahead of schedule, up from just 4GW a decade ago, though coal still generates 70% of electricity on average.
- Transmission constraints caused nearly two-thirds of India's renewable energy curtailment in Q1 2026, wasting 300 GWh of clean power, according to Ember, with one in four inter-state transmission projects facing delays of over a year.
- Sumant Sinha, CEO of Nasdaq-listed ReNew Power, told the BBC that generation projects can be built in 18-24 months while transmission "takes much longer" due to right-of-way, land acquisition, and multi-agency coordination.
- Battery storage projects have collapsed after a surge in battery prices, Middle East war-driven raw material shortages, and a weakening Indian currency that raised financing costs.
- India will require $400-500bn to meet its 500GW renewables target by 2030, yet around 83% of its climate mitigation finance is sourced domestically — and emerging economies outside China receive only about 15% of global clean-energy investment despite housing two-thirds of the world's population.
- The International Energy Agency forecasts India's electricity demand will jump 80% by 2035, the steepest increase among emerging economies, driven by data centre and chip manufacturing expansion.
Why it matters: Q1 2026 alone saw 300 GWh of clean power wasted to transmission bottlenecks while storage projects fell through on financing — yet the IEA projects India's electricity demand will surge 80% by 2035. If the world's third-largest emitter cannot close its grid and storage gap at the same time data centres and chip fabs accelerate consumption, the shortfall in usable clean power threatens India's 500GW target and the global emissions trajectory alongside it.
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