ET World Leaders Forum: Suzlon CEO says ‘marrying’ solar and wind energy offers India a chance to become a global green-energy powerhouse

India’s renewable energy generation landscape is transforming significantly, and has emerged as a pivot to the country’s growth strategy. Around 50% of the total power generation in the country is already renewable, making India the largest global renewable energy market, outside of China.

“The larger opportunity, however, lies in the Firm and Dispatchable Renewable Energy (FDRE),” Suzlon Group CEO, Ajay Kapur, maintained while speaking at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum-2026, held on August 21-22 in the national capital. The FDRE is a combination of solar, wind, and battery storage, Kapur said.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, also addressed the Forum, asserting that the world was looking at India as a “bright spot of growth and hope”. “The world has witnessed many ups and downs over the past few years, and these experiences have made one thing abundantly clear: whether one likes it or not, the futures of all nations are interconnected. Nothing is possible in isolation,” Modi said.


Kapur spoke during the panel discussion titled, “India's Energy Transition: From Ambition to Action.” He emphasized that the transition towards renewable energy, in India, was powered primarily by solar and wind energy.

While there has been a significant expansion of solar energy, over the past decade or so, wind energy has remained largely untapped. “India currently has 1100 gigawatts of wind potential, and interestingly we have been able to harness only 5% of that,” Kapur said, during the discussion, pointing towards the huge, untapped potential wind has to offer.

The Suzlon CEO, however, added that the bottlenecks in the process of harnessing the wind are mammoth, and termed it really difficult to make a project come to life.

“You have to acquire land, you have to get the permits, and then there are the executions. It needs a lot of effort on ground,” he said, adding that the best way to harness wind, for the nation, is to have “a mix of solar, wind, and battery,”

He explained that the two major sources, solar and wind, need to be harnessed and then batteries need to be added to the chain. Kapur calls it a “marriage” of the two energy sources.

“A good marriage between solar and wind. Solar works beautifully in the morning hours. But then there is a curtailment happening because of the natural challenges in the grid. Wind works beautifully well in the evening. So how do we marry between the two and bring batteries?” Kapur said.

Kapur believes that the 82 gigawatt storage of the country needs to be enhanced to over 400 gigawatts, over the next four to five years, to make this “marriage” of solar and wind energies possible.

“India has the potential to supply around 20 percent of the world's wind energy, and that can generate some substantial revenue for the country as well,” he said.

It is safe to say that India’s renewable energy story has extended a little further than generation capacity, and offers a potential of making India a clean-energy powerhouse.