Abstract
India’s rapid renewable energy (RE) transition, including the focus on solar and wind energy, is widely celebrated as a pathway toward low-carbon growth and energy security. The wind sector in India holds enormous untapped potential for energy transition. As government policies now focus on this growth potential, some challenges and constraints need to be considered. This paper raises critical questions about which interests must be prioritized, and at what cost. The present RE frameworks in India often bypass environmental impact assessments (EIA) for wind projects, creating significant gaps in accountability. These omissions risk overlooking the social, ecological, and livelihood concerns of communities directly impacted by land acquisition and project development. This paper examines the intersection of wind energy policy looking at current and future policy and practice, environmental governance, and social justice in India’s wind sector.
Introduction
India announced its net-zero target for 2070 at the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference, 2021 (COP26), strengthening India’s commitment to climate action and just energy transitions. With 45 years to its decarbonization goal, the energy sector in India has continued to progress towards rapid transformation to support clean energy.
Additionally, India has also set a national commitment to decarbonize nearly 50% of its energy by 2030, taking its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW (Shankar et al, 2022). As one of the world’s fastest-growing economies with rapidly increasing demands for electricity, India faces dual challenges of meeting energy needs while reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, especially with surmounting international pressure on the matter. On a global scale, India has led efforts in expanding its non-fossil fuel capacity, but significant challenges remain in meeting the targets set forth. With five years till the target year, India’s growth trajectory, decentralization efforts, RE capacity, and challenges within the sector can be analyzed to think of alternate pathways
Currently, India’s installed renewable energy capacity is over 237.49 GW as of 2025 (MNRE, 2025). India’s diverse renewable energy portfolio includes small and large hydro power, biomass power, waste-to-energy, bio power, ground-mounted, hybrid, and off-grid solar and wind power (MNRE, 2025).
Wind energy has emerged as a cornerstone of India’s renewable energy portfolio as it offers scalable and increasingly cost-competitive electricity. In the last few decades, India has built a robust domestic manufacturing base and favorable policy frameworks to assist the grid-connectivity for wind energy. This paper will take a look at India’s wind energy sector, its capacity and potential to support energy transition, its evolution and policy, offshore wind, as well as challenges and opportunities for human-centric wind transition, especially for remote areas in the country.
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Footnotes
[1] These complementary energy sources can fill the gap for daily cyclic issues; however, it is still important to note that without efficient storage solutions, renewable energy intermittency challenges remain.
[2] The government of India began working on wind energy from the 1980s to the early 1990s, influenced by the 1970s energy crisis. The Department of Nonconventional Sources began research and development in the renewable energy sector, and wind energy saw growth from 41MW to 968 MW installed capacity in just 4 years between 1992 to 1998; (Sharma, 2019)
[3] China has surpassed its 500’000 MW milestone in 2024 and had an installed capacity of 561’492 MW at the end of the year 2024; WWEA, 2025.
[4] Most people employed in the sector are also young professionals with nearly 55 per cent of the workforce between the ages of 26 and 35 years of age, which makes the sector a future-focused employer; PTI, Business Standard, 2025.
[5] This carbon footprint is still relatively less than traditional energy generation/ thermal power, yet it is important to consider the net-zero targets and offsetting mechanisms for the future.
