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Bengaluru: India’s investments in solar power are delivering. According to a new analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an independent research organisation, India is among the five countries that recorded a dip in fossil fuel-driven power generation after the first month of the Hormuz blockade brought on by the US-Iran war. India was able to offset this dip due to large increases in solar power generation.
Globally, power generation from fossil fuels fell in March as growth in solar and wind power offset the effect of the Hormuz blockade, the CREA report found.
CREA’s finding that the share of renewable energy in India’s generation mix has increased compared to March last year while coal has declined is an “important milestone”, energy experts told The Wire. However, India’s energy requirements show an evening peak – something solar cannot cater to. This needs to be managed via battery storage and other improvements, they added.
Around 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas passes through the two mile-wide shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, per a recent briefing by research firm Zero Carbon Analytics. According to Kpler, a data agency that tracks and monitors shipping vessels worldwide, 50% of India’s crude imports transit through the Strait of Hormuz — the same strait that has witnessed a huge drop in ship movement due to the war between the United States and Israel, and Iran.
India, therefore, remains highly exposed to potential supply disruptions, Kpler had warned. Experts have said that given the increasingly volatile West Asian landscape, rapid deployment of clean technologies is no longer just a climate imperative but a strategic necessity for India, as The Wire had reported on March 2.
The CREA compiled near-real-time power generation data across countries including the US, China, EU and India from several sources including Grid-India, Ember and the International Energy Agency. Grid-India (formerly the Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO) is a Government of India Enterprise under the Ministry of Power, which operates India’s electricity grid through the National Load Despatch Centre (NLDC) and five Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDCs) to ensure power availability within and across the regions.
In its report published on April 15, CREA found that across the world, power generation from fossil fuels fell in the first month since the start of the Hormuz blockade. Total power generation from fossil fuels across countries fell by 1% year-on-year, with coal-fired generation flat and gas-fired generation falling by 4%. Coal-fired power generation fell in the US, India, EU, Turkey, and South Africa. The largest reductions in coal-fired power generation took place in the U.S., India, South Africa, Turkiye, Germany and the Netherlands.
“In the US and India, growth in solar power was the single largest driver of the fall in fossil power generation,” the report said.
Meanwhile, seaborne coal transport volumes fell by 3% – the lowest levels since 2021, per the report. It quoted Kpler data as showing that departures of coal shipments to destinations in both China and India fell by 9%.
“The data contradicts widespread expectations that coal power generation would rise in response to the crisis,” the CREA report said. “The record buildout of solar and wind in 2025 helped reduce the need for power generation from fossil fuels and mitigate the impact of the Hormuz blockade.”
The report noted that there was “no shortage” of announcements pertaining to clean energy policies and investments from governments and utilities in response to the Hormuz crisis. It quoted India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) issuing a Bidding Trajectory
for issuance of renewable energy power procurement bids of 50 GW per annum by ‘Renewable Energy Implementing Agencies’ (REIAs) from FY 2023-24 to FY 2027-28.
According to data provided by the union government in Parliament on April 2, electricity generation from non-conventional energy sources (solar, wind, nuclear, small hydroprojects and others) has increased gradually from 1.47 lakh MU (million units of electricity) in 2020-21, to 2.55 lakh MU in 2024-25. In the financial year 2025-26 (till February), this figure has gone up to 2.83 lakh MU.
“The record growth in global clean power generation, particularly solar and wind, has helped ease the impact of the latest fossil fuel crisis,” Lauri Myllyvirta, Lead Analyst at CREA, said in a statement. “The increase in clean electricity offset the fall in gas-fired power generation following the Hormuz blockade, preventing a jump in coal-fired power generation. To mitigate the effects of the current crisis and make such recurring global emergencies a thing of the past, it’s essential to use this moment to accelerate the global energy transition.”
As The Wire reported, a CREA report in March had already shown that India witnessed a drop in coal-fuelled power generation in 2025. The largest reductions in coal-fired power generation occurred in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan – the same states that also led in the deployment of new solar and wind power projects in the same year.
In January, CREA had reported that coal power generation fell in both China and India in 2025 after both countries added record amounts of clean energy. The last time both countries registered a drop in coal power output was in 1973. These shifts by India and China have “international implications”, CREA had noted, because the power sectors of the two countries drove 93% of the rise in global carbon dioxide emissions from 2015-2024.
India’s power sector has seen a “significant shift” over the last financial year, with the country adding roughly 55 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, with solar alone contributing about 48 GW, commented Vibhuti Garg, Director for South Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“This is a substantial scale-up, and it’s beginning to show not just in installed capacity, but also in actual electricity generation,” she said.
According to the recent analysis by CREA, the share of renewable energy in India’s generation mix has increased compared to March last year, while coal’s share has declined. This, she said, is an “important milestone as it signals that clean energy is no longer just incremental capacity, but is actively displacing fossil-based generation”.
“What’s driving this shift is simple: renewables, especially solar, are now among the most cost-competitive sources of power in India. As a result, they are increasingly being dispatched to meet demand, particularly during the daytime,” Garg said.
Solar is now playing a central role in meeting daytime demand, especially around the noon peak. However, India has a dual peak demand pattern. There is a morning-to-afternoon peak, and then a sharper evening peak. This evening peak remains a challenge, Garg noted.
“Since solar generation drops off after sunset, this demand is still largely being met by coal-fired power. Earlier, gas-based generation used to play a balancing role during these hours. But in March 2026, due to constraints in gas supply, coal has stepped in more prominently to meet this evening peak. So while the rise of renewables is clearly a positive signal, it also highlights the next frontier for India’s energy transition: managing the evening peak through solutions like battery storage, demand-side management, and more flexible generation.”
India recently announced its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and experts including Garg have commented before that these targets are in fact “unambitious”. India has already reached around 52% of installed capacity from non-fossil sources, and getting to 60% looks very achievable—likely even ahead of schedule, as we’ve seen with some of India’s earlier climate targets, Garg commented.
“So the real question is not whether India will meet this target, but by how much it will overachieve it,” she added. “The bigger challenge now lies beyond the power sector. For India to meaningfully reduce its emissions intensity, industries and other end-use sectors need to decarbonise much faster. That transition will inevitably drive up electricity demand.”
The key, then, is to ensure that this rising demand is met increasingly through renewable energy, Garg told The Wire.
“That’s the direction India needs to move in – linking industrial decarbonisation with clean electricity growth –so that overall emissions intensity can come down in a sustained way.”
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