India Gets $386 Billion Financing Pledge For Green Energy Push

(Bloomberg) -- India’s renewable energy ministry received combined investment commitments of $386 billion from banks and financial institutions, as it seeks to shore up funding to decarbonise the economy.

The investments would help India reach its goal of more than doubling clean electricity capacity by 2030, Renewables Minister Pralhad Joshi said at the RE-Invest conference in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. The ministry had asked project developers and investors to submit their commitments prior to the event. 

India, the world’s third biggest carbon emitter after China and the US, aims to have 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity by the end of the decade, a target that is getting tighter with time. To meet that goal, it needs to add about 44 gigawatts every year through 2030, tripling the average of the past five years, according to Bloomberg calculations based on power ministry data.   

The conference is a congregation of project developers, debt and equity investors, manufacturing companies, as well as government policymakers, coming together to iron out difficulties to speedier installation.

India’s rapidly growing electricity demand has been a draw for investors, but transmission bottlenecks, land acquisition delays and a chronically mismanaged distribution system have weighed on the industry’s growth.  

This year, the states, which own most of the power retail network, were also asked to spell out what reforms they would undertake to absorb more green power.