India's Non-Fossil Power Capacity Passed 50 Per Cent in June 2025, Five Years Ahead of Its 2030 Pledge, and Reached 308 GW by 30 September 2026

India’s non-fossil sources held 242.78 GW of the country’s 484.82 GW of installed power capacity on 30 June 2025, a share of 50.08 per cent, according to a Ministry of New and Renewable Energy release of 14 July 2025. A gigawatt (GW) is a thousand megawatts, and “non-fossil” means hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and nuclear, as against coal, lignite, gas and diesel. The ministry’s table of 30 September 2026, updated on 8 October, counts 308.03 GW of non-fossil capacity, and a PIB factsheet of 13 August 2026 puts the share above 54 per cent at the end of July.

What the ministry announced on 14 July 2025

The release said India had reached 50 per cent of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil sources five years ahead of the target in its Nationally Determined Contribution, the climate pledge each country files under the Paris Agreement. Its annexure gave the split as of 30 June 2025: thermal 242.04 GW (49.92 per cent), nuclear 8.78 GW, and renewables including large hydro 234.00 GW. Of the renewable figure, 49.38 GW was large hydro and 184.62 GW was solar, wind, bioenergy and small hydro.

The Ministry of Power repeated the figures in a Rajya Sabha reply of 16 March 2026, saying the 50 per cent mark was reached in June 2025. A Ministry of Power release of 29 October 2025 had put the total at 500.89 GW on 30 September 2025, with non-fossil sources at 256.09 GW, over 51 per cent.

Two targets that are easy to confuse

The 50 per cent figure comes from India’s updated NDC, submitted to the United Nations in August 2022. It commits India to about 50 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based sources by 2030, with the help of technology transfer and low-cost international finance, including from the Green Climate Fund. The earlier 2015 NDC had set 40 per cent, and the ministry announced on 2 December 2021 that this had been reached in November 2021, at 156.83 GW of 390.8 GW (40.1 per cent).

The 500 GW figure is a separate pledge. At the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November 2021, the Prime Minister said: “India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030.” The 2022 NDC text filed with the UN does not mention 500 GW. The same Glasgow statement worded its second pledge as meeting 50 per cent of energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030, while the NDC words it as a share of installed capacity from non-fossil sources. This article uses the NDC wording, because that is what the ministries measured in June 2025.

The share from 2014 to 2026

Each figure below is from the ministry named in brackets, for the date given.

• 31 March 2014: 81.16 GW of 249.42 GW, or 32.54 per cent (Ministry of Power, 16 March 2026)
• November 2021: 156.83 GW of 390.8 GW, or 40.1 per cent (MNRE, 2 December 2021)
• 30 June 2025: 242.78 GW of 484.82 GW, or 50.08 per cent (MNRE, 14 July 2025)
• 31 December 2025: 266.79 GW of 513.73 GW, or 51.93 per cent (Ministry of Power, 16 March 2026)
• 31 January 2026: 271,969 MW of 520,511 MW, or 52.3 per cent (Ministry of Power, 12 March 2026)
• February 2026: 52.57 per cent (Cabinet release, 25 March 2026)
• 31 July 2026: 300.50 GW, over 54 per cent of about 552 GW (PIB factsheet, 13 August 2026)
• 30 September 2026: 308.03 GW (MNRE)

The 2026 count is about 3.8 times the 2014 count, by this piece’s arithmetic.

What is counted

MNRE’s table for 30 September 2026 lists 171.05 GW of solar, 59.20 GW of wind, 52.06 GW of large hydro (which includes 7.43 GW of pumped storage, plants that pump water uphill and release it later), 5.18 GW of small hydro, 9.82 GW of bagasse (sugarcane waste) cogeneration, 1.05 GW of other biomass and 0.88 GW of waste-to-energy plants. Together they make 299.25 GW of renewables including large hydro. Nuclear adds 8.78 GW, which gives 308.03 GW. The table excludes 100 MW of nuclear capacity that has been under outage since May 2025.

Solar is more than half of the total, and the yearly solar figures are covered in a separate article. Nuclear comes from the atomic programme, and the PIB factsheet of 13 August 2026 gives its 2047 goal as 100 GW.

A record year for additions

The ministry’s release of 8 April 2026 says 55.29 GW of non-fossil capacity was added in 2025-26, the highest in any year; the previous high was 29.5 GW in 2024-25. Solar contributed 44.61 GW and wind 6.05 GW, the most wind in a single year. At the same event the Minister, Pralhad Joshi, said the International Renewable Energy Agency’s Renewable Energy Statistics 2026, with data to December 2025, ranks India third in the world for installed renewable capacity, ahead of Brazil.

In the six months from April to September 2026, the MNRE table shows 24.56 GW of non-fossil capacity added, including 3.69 GW in September.

What the plants supplied

Capacity is what plants can produce at their rated output; generation is what they did produce. The ministry’s release of 8 April 2026 gives India’s total generation in 2025-26 as 1,845.921 billion units, of which non-fossil sources supplied 538.97 billion units, or 29.2 per cent. Generation from fossil fuels fell 4.12 per cent to 1,306.951 billion units that year, and coal generation fell 3.69 per cent, while total generation grew 0.93 per cent.

Ember, an energy think tank, counts calendar 2025 and reports that clean sources supplied 27 per cent of India’s electricity, up from 22 per cent in 2024. It puts coal at 71 per cent, down from 75 per cent. The two cover different periods, the financial year 2025-26 and calendar 2025. The ministry’s Lok Sabha reply of 22 July 2026 describes wind and solar as variable and intermittent, and the PIB factsheet of 13 August 2026 says coal supports over 70 per cent of generation.

On 29 July 2025, the Ministry of Power reported, renewables met 51.5 per cent of the country’s 203 GW electricity demand, the highest share it had recorded.

Toward 500 GW and 60 per cent

Against the 500 GW pledge, 308.03 GW is about 62 per cent, with 191.97 GW to add, by this piece’s arithmetic. At the 55.29 GW added in 2025-26, that is about three and a half years of additions. MNRE’s release of 8 April 2026 says it is working toward 500 GW by 2030, and the Lok Sabha reply of 22 July 2026 says the Central Electricity Authority has published a transmission plan to integrate over 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030. The April to September count of 24.56 GW compares with 28 GW of non-fossil additions in the same months of 2025, per the Ministry of Power’s October 2025 release.

The Union Cabinet approved India’s NDC for 2031 to 2035 on 25 March 2026. It sets a target of 60 per cent non-fossil share of installed electric power capacity by 2035.