Over the next few months, India’s power system will be tested like never before. The conflict in the Gulf has already tightened global gas supplies and caused prices to rise sharply, threatening the feasibility of gas-fired generation (~20 GW but needed in non-solar peak hours) and increasing the cost of each imported unit of energy. At the same time, with rising temperatures, the expansion of air conditioning and mobility, and the increasing electrification of industry, our own electricity demand will peak in the coming summer. Simply put, we are facing dual pressures: less affordable gas on the supply side, and more electricity demand on the demand side.​
In such a situation, any gas shortage is not just a fuel problem; This is an energy security issue which, if not resolved in time, may expose the country’s weakness. Gas-fired plants have long served as flexible support for the grid, covering evening peak periods and balancing variable renewable energy. As gas availability diminishes, battery storage capacity proves slow to come on board and gas prices skyrocket, meeting peak demand can be extremely challenging, even as evening demand increases due to a combination of home cooking loads, cooling and commercial activity. If we don’t act now to bring construction-ready and production-ready renewable energy projects online – especially those that contribute to evening hours – we may also face grid stability issues.
The good news is that India is not short of renewable energy capacity; We face the challenge of implementing RE projects. Recent analysis and reports published by various sources suggest that five issues alone – grid construction delays, sub-optimal connectivity allocation, land and right-of-way constraints, regulatory friction, and delays in signing power sale agreements – could collectively jeopardize the 40-60 GW of wind projects that should be operational by 2030. Delays in the transmission system already jeopardize about 6 GW of wind capacity today and could threaten another 34 GW if it does not happen. Solution is done.
Why does this matter so much now, when gas is scarce and demand is rising? Because the STELLAR model and modern system-wide modeling by independent experts show that wind energy, in particular, is central to low-cost resource sufficiency in India. When reliability and realistic operational constraints are properly modeled, expansion plans consistently draw more air each year, increasingly exceeding the conservative limits imposed by planners in their optimization tasks. State after state – Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh – the low-cost, reliability-compliant route requires far more air than current state plans and procurement pipelines can provide. Where limits on annual wind additions are relaxed in the models, the system projects approximately 90+ GW more wind by 2035, while still meeting stringent reliability standards.
The benefits are not abstract but proven through modeling. Least cost of energy plan where we allow air to compete fairly and remove artificial ceiling, thereby yielding all around ₹Rs 2.3 lakh crore in system-wide savings between 2026 and 2035, even after accounting for higher upfront capital investment. These savings come from lower fuel costs, less coal start-up and stoppages and less reliance on expensive balancing capacity. Coal capacity remains in the system as a safety net, but its average plant load factor falls by about six percentage points, reflecting a shift from baseload to flexible, residual operation. At the same time, emissions fall rapidly, and the grid’s exposure to fuel price shocks—as we are now seeing in global gas markets—is materially reduced.
Especially the solution to the extremes of a brisk evening is the need of the hour. Batteries and other storage technologies will undoubtedly be at the center of India’s long-term transformation. However, the global supply chain for lithium-ion batteries and critical minerals remains highly concentrated, subject to trade restrictions and price volatility. Over the next two to three years, relying on large-scale battery roll-out alone as the first line of defense against gas shortages will expose India to a different set of geopolitical dependencies. In contrast, we already have a large pipeline of wind and solar projects, with land, offtake and equipment largely tied up, awaiting last-mile clearances, connectivity and PPAs. In an emergency, prioritizing the rapid execution of these projects is actually the simpler outcome: it utilizes domestic capabilities, existing manufacturing capacity, and approved corridors, while allowing time for batteries to scale up to more secure, diverse supply chains.
So, from the perspective of the extremity of this summer evening, the hierarchy of urgency is clear. First, connect and produce every possible megawatt of wind and wind-heavy hybrid capacity, as these plants naturally produce in the late afternoon and evening hours when solar output drops and gas-fired plants may lack fuel. Second, maintaining high performance of solar projects, thereby keeping coal demand low during the day and storage supporting supply in the evening. Third, strategically support storage deployment without assuming that batteries can be mass-produced in a matter of months in the face of uncertain global mineral and cell supplies.
Then what should be done at the emergency level?
First, we need a time-bound Summer 2026 RE Readiness Mission co-led by the Ministry of Power and MNRE, with CEA and CTUIL as the technical backbone. The mandate of the mission should be clear: identify all renewable projects – especially wind and wind-solar hybrids – that can be added or activated within the next 6-12 months, and their bottlenecks resolved on a war footing. This means expediting the preparation of transmission bays, removing discrepancies between project commissioning and substation completion and, where necessary, approving temporary clearance arrangements, which can later be regularized. A joint task force has already been recommended by the industry to address grid, land and PSA issues to achieve 100 GW of wind power by 2030; That recommendation now needs to be implemented with cabinet-level support.
Second, connectivity allocation in high wind areas should be immediately rationalized. Substations in Rajasthan, Gujarat and other wind-rich regions where high-CUF wind can provide strong evening support should prioritize the capacity of ready-to-commission wind and wind-heavy hybrids, rather than allowing queue-based allocation alone for projects nearing completion to crowd the corridors. In a year when gas is limited and the evening peak is our Achilles’ heel, this is simple wisdom.
Third, states should consider wind and hybrid projects as infrastructure of national importance for the coming 24 months. This means single-window clearance for land and right-of-way, time-bound clearance for development permissions, and strict adherence to central guidelines on forecasting, scheduling and deviation settlement. Impending policy changes at the state-level should not apply to projects commissioned before mid-2027. Investors will respond immediately if the rules are clear, even for a few years.
Fourth, we need to modernize our approach to resource adequacy. CEA has moved towards a more sophisticated, chronological model for planning capacity expansion. The next step is to establish a harmonized national methodology that values ​​reliable megawatts across key time bands – day, evening, night and season – rather than treating all megawatts equally. When adequacy is framed in terms of firm energy and ramping capacity, the contribution of wind in the evening and monsoon hours becomes visible and bankable, and planning automatically shifts towards a portfolio of wind, solar and storage that minimizes both cost and risk. This is the only planning approach consistent with the volatile fuel markets we see today.
Fifth, the PSA delay must be addressed. Today, about 12 GW of capacity is in limbo as PSAs are pending, with an average delay of eight months. In an environment of gas shortage and high demand, this is a self-inflicted wound. The Ministry of Power can and should work with Discoms to build consensus around higher system price for wind based RE projects based on the specificities of the demand pattern of the respective State.
Some would argue that these steps are ambitious, that we cannot possibly move fast enough. I would like to tell them that India has time and again demonstrated exceptional performance when the country has recognized an emergency – whether dealing with disasters, vaccinating against a pandemic, or stabilizing the financial system. The current combination of the Gulf conflict, gas shortages and record electricity demand is exactly such a moment. Decisions taken over the next six months – on transmission, on PSA, on state-level rules and on the resource-adequacy methodology – will determine not only how we proceed this summer, but how resilient our electricity system will be to the next geopolitical shock.
India has set a target of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 and net zero capacity by 2070. These are long-term milestones. But history will record whether, when faced with immediate fuel and power crises, we treated renewable energy as a central pillar of energy security – or as a file to be transferred after the summer has passed. For the sake of our economy, our consumers, and our strategic autonomy, we must choose the former.
This article has been written by Alok Kumar, former Secretary, Ministry of Power, Government of India.
