India's Renewable Surge Meets Coal Reality

Synopsis

India's non-fossil power capacity has surpassed 291 gigawatts by mid-2026 and the nation has already met its Paris Agreement target of renewable power capacity five years early, making it the third country in the world to have the highest power capacity from renewable sources. But the reality of electricity generation is more complex – coal remains the major source of electricity to households and industry. This article looks at the increasing disparity in capacity additions and generation share, and its implications for India's climatic future.

Record Capacity Additions

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has announced that India installed the maximum annual capacity of 55.29 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil power during the financial year 2025-26, which is almost double the 24.46 GW installed in the previous year.

. By May 2026, cumulative renewable capacity will come in at about 283 GW, of which more than half is solar and about a fifth is wind. Union minister Pralhad Joshi told reporters that India has taken up third position in the world in terms of installed capacity of renewable energy sources after China and the United States.

The government has achieved 50% non-fossil fuel in electricity generation in June 2025, ahead of the original target of 2030. The solar rooftop initiative, largely supported by the PM Surya Ghar scheme, and the solar parks have both played an important role in this growth.

Coal remains the dominant generation fuel

Installed capacity is not the same as actual Electricity Generation. Even though renewables accounted for over 50 per cent of installed capacity, coal (dominantly coal) still provided about 70 to 75 per cent of India's power generation till 2025, as coal plants are more reliable than intermittent solar and wind power generation.

Coal continues to provide nearly 79 per cent of the domestic energy supply for the country, even though its contribution to the installed energy capacity lost ground and came to less than 50 per cent for the first time, according to the report released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation titled Energy Statistics India 2026.

Coal production increased almost 5 per cent year to year to exceed 1,047 million tonnes, while according to the Climate Action Tracker's assessment, India's plans for 1026-27 for the National Electricity Plan fall short of the schedule and there is a need for over 100 additional gigawatts of renewable capacity to be added to meet the interim targets.

The Road to 2070

India's very own modelling indicates that the country can achieve Net Zero by 2070 even as coal use grows in the short term, but the addition of renewables and storage can be scaled up quickly enough after that. The scenarios developed by the think tank for the power sector have put a figure of up to $14.23 trillion for cumulative investments on a net-zero path by 2070 which will put a strain on India's financial capability as much as its engineering goals.

Until now, the nation's clean-energy narrative has been twofold—record-setting capacity additions and a power grid that remains very reliant on coal to light homes.