India is firmly on track to achieve its ambitious renewable energy targets, according to Sumant Sinha, Founder, Chairman & CEO of ReNew.

 

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, about the country's renewable energy trajectory, Sinha expressed confidence that India will meet its goal of 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Looking further ahead, he emphasised that achieving the vision of a "Viksit Bharat" (Developed India) by 2047 will necessitate scaling up renewable capacity to nearly 3,000 GW.

Sinha highlighted that recent government initiatives have laid a strong foundation for India's renewable energy journey. Over the past two years, central and state governments have auctioned approximately 130 GW of new capacity, which is set to be built in the next three to four years.

"The story is actually getting more robust, if anything," Sinha said. "From next year onwards, we'll start seeing numbers between 40 and 50 GW of new capacity annually, eventually plateauing at 50 GW. This trajectory will take us very close to the 500 GW target by 2030."

Sinha underscored the broader ecosystem being developed alongside the renewable energy capacity. India is making strides toward indigenising its manufacturing capabilities across solar, wind, and battery technologies. "By 2030, we’ll have a complete end-to-end business opportunity with no dependence on any other country. This robust infrastructure will support our growing energy needs and facilitate the energy transition," he noted.

For India to achieve the status of a developed nation by 2047, Sinha estimates that nearly 3,000 GW of renewable capacity will be required. This ambitious expansion will demand significant investments, amounting to $3-4 trillion over the next two decades. "Given our energy consumption growth, we will need almost 500 GW every three to four years after 2030. The scale of investments and innovation required is substantial, but achievable," he said. Sinha also pointed to advancements in offshore wind, floating solar, and energy storage solutions like pumped hydro and battery installations as key drivers of this growth.

Below are the excerpts of the interview.

Q: Let's talk about India at this point in time. And we have made gains on the renewable energy side, and we are moving closer and closer in achieving the target, what's the story looking like at this point in time?

Sinha: The story is actually getting more robust, if anything. See, in the last two years, the government of India, the central government and various state governments collectively auctioned off about 130 gigawatts of new capacity. All of this has to be built out in the next four years’ time, or three years’ time. Which means that very quickly, we will be on a trajectory to be actually adding 50 gigawatts of new renewable capacity every year. So now it's a question of getting it executed.

Q: We've been doing about 25-27 gigawatt so far?

Sinha: We've been doing less than 20 gigawatt per year. This year it is likely to be around 25-30 gigawatt. And I would say that from next year onwards, we'll start seeing numbers of between 40 and 50 gigawatt, and then we'll maybe plateau off at 50 gigawatt, which eventually, if you extrapolate down to 2030 will take us very close to the 500 gigawatt number.

Therefore, I think, to all the sceptics of that number, I think we're going to get it done, or maybe we're going to be very close to that.

The beauty of the whole thing, is that by 2030 we would have got a very robust IPP business in place, with 500 gigawatts of installed capacity, the whole ecosystem, as well as the manufacturing capacity. Because behind all of this, the whole manufacturing ecosystem is also getting indigenised. Solar is getting into India, wind is already there, batteries eventually. So, this whole thing will be a complete end to end business opportunity with no dependence on any other country of the world.

And given our needs of energy consumption and growth, and given the transition, we would require almost 500 gigawatts every three to four years after that. So, by 2047 the target for us to become Viksit Bharat, we will need almost 3,000 gigawatts of renewable capacity by that time to get to those numbers, and that requires an investment of maybe at least $3-4 trillion over the next 15-20, years.

So I think the story is starting, in a way, till 2030 we've done all the hard work so far to get us to this point, and I think after that it is just going to be more of the same. And we'll start getting into things like offshore wind, floating solar, battery installations will be much, much bigger, pumped hydro solar solution will come in. So, I think the whole industry is going to change very dramatically.

Q: On the nuclear side, and that is something that a lot of people here are talking about, especially in the context of the kind of energy consumption reshape that's going to take place because of the data centres guzzling energy at this point. Is that something that is being talked about in India realistically?

Sinha: Keep one thing in mind, that the narratives that we follow are driven by the Western world. In the Western world, for the first time, energy demand is actually growing because of demand coming from data centres, which is why you hear so much excitement around data centres and what will you do about it and so on. In India, we've had demand growing at 6-7% every year for the last many years and it will continue. So for us, data centres is just one additionality to our demand basket, rather than being the only one that is contributing to it.

The second difference is that in the US, transmission infrastructure is very limited. That's why they have to produce the energy near the data centre. In India we actually have a very robust transmission infrastructure, so we can produce in Rajasthan and have a data centre in Bangalore, for example. So that is where nuclear is particularly of importance in the US market. And having said that, now let me also say that nuclear is going to be an important part of the solution, particularly the small reactors, which again, India has many already installed.

And I think if we can do work on the fuel side and get the fuel sourcing supply side under control, because right now, we have dependence on other countries, if you can get that under control through new technologies, for example, based around thorium, of which we have a lot of reserves in India, then you can actually see a fairly good domestic small nuclear reactor industry also developing where the cost could actually be quite comparable to base load power.