This year’s El Niño – the recurrent weather pattern that drives up global temperatures – will hit India’s energy system harder than anywhere else.
India faces a double challenge. Not only will the falling winds and rainfall associated with El Niño cut the country’s power generation from turbines and hydropower, but the warmer temperatures will also drive up demand for power-hungry air conditioning. Additional cooling demand could total as much as 10 TWh within a year – the equivalent of a quarter of Delhi’s annual electricity use.
Combine the lost output from renewables and the increased demand for power, and India could face a generation gap of nearly 18 TWh. Currently the most likely outcome is a surge in coal-fired power, which would release an estimated 17 million tonnes of CO2. In the most severe scenario, the extra coal generation reaches 24 TWh, roughly half of India’s entire increase in coal burn last year.
‘India has just endured a deadly heatwave and one of its hottest summers on record, pushing power demand to an all-time high of 270 GW.
India must stay on track for its target of 500 GW of non-fossil power by 2030 but also move much faster on batteries and grid upgrades, so that clean energy can meet future surges in power demand reliably and affordably.‘
Nandikesh Sivalingam, Director, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)
There is another way, however. Solar power is playing an ever-increasing role in powering India, now meeting 24% of daytime power demand. Solar generation is also far less affected
by El Niño, meaning that every additional solar panel and battery that India installs helps future-proof the grid against extreme weather patterns like this one.
India added 44.6 GW of solar last year, almost double the year before. The effect is already visible – in 2025, total electricity generation rose by one percent, yet coal generation fell by four percent while renewable output grew by 22%. The trend has held into 2026 – with thermal generation between January and May staying below its 2024 level even as demand hit a record and solar generation jumped by almost a third.
The 2026 El Niño is a foretaste of extreme weather events that are becoming more common in a warming world. With El Niño occurring on a two-to-seven-year cycle, the extent to which India can meet or exceed its solar and storage deployment targets is the key metric for grid resilience.
Record demand peaks like the 270 GW set in May are routinely cited to argue the case for new coal capacity. But India’s coal-fired power plants are facing serious challenges in keeping up with the energy demand curve and operating with the flexibility the grid requires throughout the day. As a result of this inflexibility, grid operators curtailed around 2.1 TWh of solar and wind last year just to keep coal plants running.
Ember estimates that just 10 GWh of battery storage – charging during the midday solar peak and discharging into the evening – would have prevented that much waste. That same storage would allow solar to meet the majority of the evening and post-monsoon demand that El Niño will intensify. Yet India is still lining up around 130 GW of new coal capacity – through plants that are costly, slow to build, and risk being obsolete before they’re ever switched on.
Burning more coal would carry a heavy toll for Indians – it would mean more deadly air pollution and more extreme heat. This super El Niño is expected to cause around 2,700 additional heat-related deaths in India in 2026–27, the second-highest total after Indonesia.
