India has one of the world’s longest coastlines, some of the most ambitious renewable energy targets, and a looming net zero deadline. Yet it does not have a single offshore wind turbine to show for years of effort.
Government figures hope this will change after India and the United Kingdom launched a taskforce in February, which they have dubbed a “trustforce”. It has been charged with developing an offshore wind ecosystem, supply chains and financing models. Writing after the launch, India’s minister for new and renewable energy, Prahlad Joshi, said : “With the UK’s experience and India’s scale, this trustforce will deliver measurable outcomes for energy security and sustainable growth.”
The UK is a global leader in offshore wind energy, along with China, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. It hosts several of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, including the vast Dogger Bank and Hornsea sites. The country plans to triple capacity over the next decade, with a target of up to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030.
India, one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases globally, wants to build 500 GW of what it calls “non-fossil fuel based energy resources” by 2030. This target includes 30 GW of offshore wind capacity. India has also pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2070 .
India had 272 GW of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources as of February, including 141 GW of solar and 55 GW of onshore wind. But the country remains largely reliant on coal. As of 2023, 46% of India’s energy was supplied by coal and coal products, according to the International Energy Agency.
“As we move towards net zero, we will have no option but to go into offshore wind. We can’t do without it,” Bhupinder Singh Bhalla, India’s former renewable energy secretary, tells Dialogue Earth. “It is very important to start now, so that we develop our expertise, projects start happening, the ecosystem comes in.”
Failed auctions
Back in 2015, India launched a national attempt to harness offshore energy and unlock jobs and investment. It identified the areas offshore of Tamil Nadu in the south and Gujarat to the west as having over 70 GW of wind energy potential between them.
And yet, India has struggled to get a single project off the ground.
In 2024, the government offered 74.5 billion rupees (just over USD 800 million) in so-called viability gap funding (incentives to cover risks for developers) to support the industry. But the first tender, offered nearly a decade after this national push was first unveiled, failed to get bids as India shifted its focus to solar and onshore wind power.
India is not the first country to struggle with offshore wind. Installing farms requires large amounts of money, complex technology and dealing with the huge engineering challenges posed by harsh ocean conditions.
“[Offshore wind projects] rely on a complex ecosystem of seasoned developers bringing lessons from mature markets, specialised engineering contractors, robust supply chains and banks willing to shoulder risk,” noted the London-based energy think-tank Ember last year. “So far, this has proved elusive in India, which is why even the best-intentioned policies and auctions have failed to translate into active projects.”
Duttatreya Das, who co-authored that analysis, points to design flaws in India’s tenders. He explains to Dialogue Earth that the government fixed both the buying price and the subsidy it would offer, but those two together do not cover the actual cost of generating offshore wind power.
“The central government also has a limited kitty and has to balance across sectors,” Das adds. “So, there’s a gap, and if the cost of generation is significantly higher, no one [in the energy sector] wants to put in money from their own pocket to cover it.”
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Bhalla, who led the ministry when the first tenders launched in February 2024, said the structure India came up with for its offshore plans “was not as attractive to investors as we assumed it would be”.
He points to several reasons for this failure: international developers were reluctant to take on the added risk of working in an unfamiliar market; India’s project timelines required completion within four years, against a global norm of six to eight; and the viability gap funding was not generous enough.
Bhalla, who has spent years working in government, adds it was likely the new taskforce is more a political deliverable after a bilateral meeting, rather than a considered policy initiative.
“That’s not necessarily wrong,” Bhalla says. “My only worry is how long it will take, and whether it gets converted to actionable projects. I do not want it to just exist on paper. There should be positive results out of this kind of taskforce.”
A dud Danish deal?
The UK deal is not the first time India has looked abroad for offshore wind help. In 2019, it signed an agreement with Denmark to develop the industry. Das worked on that deal. The experience makes him sceptical of the India-UK taskforce, and of India’s wider offshore ambitions:
“The Denmark programme is the one that actually started discussions that led to tenders and to a lot of data collection and awareness around offshore wind. And even after all that, it did not work out. This, by comparison, is very superficial. I won’t be surprised if nothing translates into real action.”
Denmark continues to work with India on the technical aspects of offshore wind, but the initial, commercial aims of the partnership did not materialise, says Das. In February, the MNRE insisted the UK-India taskforce was not a “ symbolic platform ” but a “working mechanism” that would address real execution challenges.
Dialogue Earth consulted Ivan Savitsky, a senior manager of the offshore wind team at the environmental sustainability consultancy, Carbon Trust. He says the UK could help India with technical know-how on market design, and support India with risk allocation. He also says there may be opportunities for supply chain partnerships between UK and Indian companies. Wind turbines in western India’s Gujarat, a state deemed to possess significant offshore wind potential (Image: Travel India / Alamy) The UK uses a two-stage auction process for offshore wind projects, which separates seabed leasing auctions from electricity generation auctions. The two stages are managed by separate authorities, the latter being the UK government, which secures the income stability for electricity providers that helps make these projects bankable.
“For new markets like India, an important lesson is to respect the level of maturity of the industry in an individual market,” Savitsky says. “The key learning, both from the successes and the challenges, is being flexible with policy and being reactive to actual industry conditions. For new markets, that’s especially important because there are different risks – new political risks, new local risks around project delivery, community engagement, and so on.”
A neighbour that solved the problem
The UK is second globally for installed offshore wind capacity. The leader, by a huge margin, is India’s neighbour and regional rival: China.
China’s immense domestic demand is fuelled by the government’s wind power targets , which have enabled a huge industry to grow. But while China leads the world in manufacturing, exports remain limited. European turbine makers are dominant beyond China, but the latter is aiming to increase its exports. Recommended Despite political tension between the two nations – including a border dispute that flares into violence – China already sells wind power technology into India’s healthy onshore sector. Some Chinese firms even have local factories.
The Indian government has been pushing a “Make in India” agenda to boost domestic industries but remains heavily dependent on Chinese companies for many renewable technologies.
Is it worth it?
Ember’s Das wonders whether offshore wind is worth it for India, given solar energy is currently so affordable and easily scalable: “Why invest in a costlier solution when you have a cheaper alternative?”
He adds that offshore wind projects, which require everything from big ports and roads to underwater cables, could face further problems by disrupting local livelihoods and ecology. “I don’t think offshore wind will ever stand a chance in India in pure economic terms. It will never be cost-competitive.”
Others think offshore wind is not only worth the investment, but essential.
“To have a proper bouquet of energy sources, it’s good to have wind, which is a natural provider of grid stability: solar is the daytime; wind is typically evening and morning. So, they together allow maximum utilisation of the grid,” argues Bhalla.
He wants the government to rework its tender design to make it more attractive for international players, offering bigger projects and more funding:
“I am disappointed the ministry has not resolved this by now. It is not rocket science. You just sit with the industry and ask: what is the problem? Talk to them, revise the norms and come back. That should have happened already.”
In the decade since its national wind plan, India has not placed a single turbine offshore. Advocates say India cannot afford another decade of the same.
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