The IEA Reports That India's Renewable Power Capacity Has Passed 300 GW and Saved More Than USD 100 Billion in Coal and Gas Imports Since 2011

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported on 3 November 2026 that India’s renewable power capacity has passed 300 gigawatts (GW) and almost quadrupled over the past decade. A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. The agency’s India Renewable Energy Market Report 2026 also estimates that renewable electricity saved India more than USD 100 billion in coal and natural gas import costs between 2011 and 2025.

The IEA launched the report the same day at the Bharat Renewable Energy Summit in New Delhi, with India’s Minister of New and Renewable Energy at the launch. This piece takes its figures from the full report and the agency’s news release, and each number below is the IEA’s unless another source is named.

What the agency says India has reached

The report’s executive summary calls India the world’s second-fastest-growing renewable energy market and the second-largest maker of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. It says India met its goal of sourcing 50 per cent of installed power capacity from non-fossil technologies in 2025, five years ahead of schedule. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy dated that milestone to June 2025 in a PIB release of 8 April 2026.

On deployment, the IEA says annual renewable additions reached 49 GW in 2025, more than triple the average of the previous five years, which made India the world’s second-largest renewable growth market that year. The report also says India is now the fourth-largest liquid biofuel market, with production up sixfold since 2020.

The IEA’s Executive Director said in the news release: “India’s renewables expansion is delivering major benefits for its energy security at a time of heightened uncertainty in global energy markets.” The Minister of New and Renewable Energy described India’s emergence as a new giant of renewable energy as the result of the progress of recent years.

How the USD 100 billion is worked out

The savings figure is a modelled estimate. The IEA built a counterfactual it calls the low-RES scenario, in which no new non-hydro renewable capacity is added after 2010. Power that solar, wind and bioenergy supplied in reality is instead produced by coal and gas plants, and the extra fuel is imported. Hydropower and nuclear stay as they were.

The difference between the two worlds is the result. By the report’s calculation, India would have used about 110 million tonnes more coal in 2025, around 11 per cent of its total coal consumption and more than half of its actual coal imports that year. Import dependence of electricity generation, the share of power made from imported fuel, would have exceeded 30 per cent in 2025, roughly twice the actual level.

Priced at historical fuel costs, that adds up to more than USD 100 billion in avoided coal and gas imports from 2011 to 2025. If fuel prices stay near their 2024 and 2025 averages, the IEA says cumulative savings could approach USD 240 billion by 2030, as The Tribune reported from ANI on 5 November. The report puts annual savings at about USD 35 billion by 2030, more than India’s actual non-coking coal and gas import bill in the 2024-25 financial year. Solar accounts for about 60 per cent of the savings and wind for almost 30 per cent.

For scale, the report says India’s yearly import bill for these two fuels averaged about USD 19 billion from 2011 to 2021, rose to USD 46 billion in 2022-23, and was about USD 32 billion to USD 34 billion a year from 2023 to 2025.

Auctions, low tariffs and hybrid projects

The IEA credits competitive auctions for much of the speed. Since 2010, the executive summary says, India has awarded over 220 GW of utility-scale renewable capacity through auctions, with standardised contracts and central agencies that pooled demand and lowered the risk to developers. Utility-scale solar PV in India has the world’s second-lowest generation cost, the executive summary says, at USD 30 to 35 per megawatt-hour, and tariffs for solar projects commissioned in 2025 were around 40 per cent below the average cost of coal-fired electricity.

The agency names India the world leader in procuring hybrid renewable projects, which combine solar, wind or storage so that output is steadier. In 2025 India auctioned 15 GW of hybrids, taking the cumulative total to 64 GW, the largest annual and cumulative volumes in the world. Average tariffs from 2023 to 2025 were around USD 45 per megawatt-hour, about 20 per cent below the average cost of power from coal plants in 2025.

Households and companies are adding their own capacity. The IEA expects solar PV built for self-consumption to triple to more than 100 GW by 2030, and it names the PM Surya Ghar rooftop scheme and PM-KUSUM, the farm solar scheme, as drivers. Corporate power contracts are expected to underpin around 20 per cent of utility-scale solar and wind additions by 2030. The PM Surya Ghar article has the installation counts and subsidy rules.

Factories as well as power plants

India’s annual solar module manufacturing capacity grew from about 22 GW in 2022 to around 150 GW in 2025 and 225 GW in September 2026, in the IEA’s figures. The Prime Minister gave the summit a figure of more than 200 GW for module capacity and nearly 40 GW for solar cells on 2 November, against about 2 GW for modules a decade ago. The ministry’s April release put module capacity at about 172 GW on 31 March 2026.

The IEA adds that most newly commissioned factories use TOPCon cell technology, which is in line with current global manufacturing. It also notes that cell production is the slower link: about 48 GW of cell capacity was awarded under the two Production Linked Incentive tranches, and about 27 GW had been commissioned by the end of 2025. Solar cell imports were about USD 2.5 billion in 2025, roughly 70 per cent of them from China.

The forecast for 2030

The IEA expects around 530 GW of renewable capacity in 2030, with more than 80 per cent of the growth coming from solar PV. Solar capacity would exceed 350 GW, wind would approach 90 GW and hydropower would reach 75 GW. The report concludes that India is expected to meet its target of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 on time. The Central Electricity Authority’s Optimal Generation Mix report projects 485 GW for 2029-30 (293 GW solar, 100 GW wind, 59 GW hydropower, 19 GW pumped storage and 15 GW bioenergy), and the IEA attributes the gap to different modelling assumptions.

Generation is forecast to rise from more than 500 terawatt-hours in 2025, one quarter of India’s electricity supply, to close to 950 terawatt-hours in 2030, or 35 per cent. Solar overtook hydropower as the largest source of renewable electricity in 2025.

Why there are several 300 GW figures

The IEA counts renewable power capacity in alternating current terms, and it includes large hydropower. It says the ministry reports solar in the same alternating current terms, while the agency’s global tracking uses direct current, which can run up to 40 per cent higher. The IEA’s table puts 2025 capacity at 262 GW in alternating current and 296 GW in direct current.

The report’s India chapter puts renewable capacity at 299 GW in September 2026 and expects it to pass 300 GW by the end of the year. Its executive summary says the line has been crossed in the fourth quarter. The ministry’s own table gave 299.25 GW on 30 September, as Energetica India reported, and that count is set out in the 299 GW article.

The ministry’s other milestone is wider. A PIB release of 9 August 2026 counted 300.50 GW of non-fossil capacity on 31 July, including 8.78 GW of nuclear, which was over 54 per cent of installed capacity of around 552 GW. The non-fossil milestone article explains the category, and the solar capacity article follows solar year by year.

What the IEA says comes next

The IEA says the next phase depends on grids, storage and system flexibility, along with stronger finances at the state distribution companies and fewer project delays. It estimates that addressing these could raise renewable capacity deployment over 2026 to 2030 by more than 20 per cent. Wind and hydropower projects, it says, need faster land acquisition and permitting.

Storage is where the report is most specific. Utility-scale battery capacity was 350 MW at the start of 2026, and the IEA expects more than 1 GW to come online during the year and yearly additions to approach 6 to 8 GW by 2030. Its figures show a development pipeline of about 111 GWh by January 2026, and 3.4 GWh commissioned at Khavda, Gujarat, by May 2026. More than 16 GW of pumped storage hydropower is under construction, against a Central Electricity Authority target of 100 GW by 2035.

The average capacity utilisation of India’s solar fleet rose from about 19.2 per cent in 2020 to 22.9 per cent in 2023 and was 20.7 per cent in 2025. The report says that fall suggests curtailment and other integration limits, curtailment being the switching off of plants because the grid cannot absorb their power. It adds that actual curtailment is likely below the upper bound it calculates, which is about 15 terawatt-hours or 10 per cent of potential solar output. The IEA expects variable renewables, mainly solar and wind, to rise from about 14 per cent of India’s electricity supply to about 26 per cent by 2030.