10 November 2025
Financial Express
Interviews
ReNew Energy Global is evaluating an opportunity to enter into the wafer and ingot segment after the government’s push to indigenise the domestic solar chain, CEO Sumant Sinha tells Arunima Bharadwaj in an interview. The company also plans to enter the green fuel segment while expanding its backward integration in manufacturing. Excerpts:
What doy ou think should
be India's strategy in COP30?
I don't know what India's NDCs (nationally
determined contributions) are going to look like, but we have to come out with
the NDCs now pretty soon. India has set bigger internal targets than external
targets. I suspect the trend will probably continue. Along with every other
country in the world, we should continue to push forward on the whole climate
change issue.
Renewable energy units’
ability to meet the peak power demand is only around 1520% now. When do you
think India will be in a position where 50% of the peak capacity will be met by
non fossil fuel power?
Daytime
peak demand is met by RE (renewable energy) at a much higher rate. We will start being able to transfer a lot of
the daytime generation of solar into the grid and start meeting a lot of the
evening peak demand too now with increased capacity. A lot depends on how quickly
the batteries (storage) are put up. There are almost 60-70 GW that have been
auctioned which means that almost 30-40 GW of extra demand can be met in the
evening from solar.
Over 40 GW of RE capacity is stuck, failing to secure a
power purchase agreement. Where does the issue stem from?
In
the last 2 years, FY24 and FY25, the government auctioned almost 90GW of new
capacity come to 120-130 GWs. The pace of auctions before that was 15-20 GW a year,
and suddenly it went upto 50GW in a year. Now all these projects are sitting
with no buyer for the power. Discoms, which were going at about 20 GW a year (in
signing contracts), suddenly are being told to sign 50 GWs a year, and they
don't have the absorptive capacity to sign for such a large amount of capacity.
This is because all these bids happened rather quickly. There wasn't sufficient
transmission capacity either.
When will we be in a
position to have the domestic solar capacity for the entire value chain
streamlined?
I
think it'll take around 5-6 years. It largely depends on government policy. We
already have modules mostly domestic. Wafers maybe indigenised by 2030 and then
polysilicon at some point after. So in another 5-7 years, I Think we’ll have a domestic
value chain, but again, it is all depend upon government.
Does the company also
plan to enter into the wafer and ingot segment, now with the ALMM(approved list
of manufactures) for all of these coming?
We're looking into it very carefully. We haven't made a final decision yet, but
it's been looked at very carefully.
What would be your focus
areas for growth and any investments going ahead?
Our
core business is adding wind and solar capacity that is something that we'll
carry on. We'll examine this further backward integration in manufacturing, and
then we look at opportunities in the green fuel space.
With US tariffs, there
have been concerns over a supply glut in the Indian market. How do you see this
impacting the industry?
We
have not sold anything in the US so far, although we've looked at the market,
but nothing really has materialised at this point. The whole tariff situation
is very uncertain, so you can't rely on it in any case in the US market. I
don't think most of the Indian suppliers were looking at the US market as a big
alternative.
Do you think India's 500
GW RE capacity target for 2030 is feasible?
I
think so. There's no reason for us not to be able to meet that target. Because,
you know, apart from utility scale bidding, you also have rooftop, you have PM
Kussum scheme etc.
