As the world’s third-largest crude oil importer, fourth-largest LNG importer, and second-largest LPG consumer, India remains heavily exposed to global fuel price volatility and geopolitical supply disruptions. Achieving true energy security requires establishing a diversified, affordable, and decarbonized energy architecture that supports long-term industrialization while advancing ecological sustainability.

Key Challenges to India’s Energy Security

• High Hydrocarbon Import Dependency: India imports roughly 88% of its crude oil and over 50% of its natural gas requirements, making the domestic economy vulnerable to international supply shocks, maritime chokepoints, and exchange-rate fluctuations.
• Surging Peak Electricity Demand: Accelerating urbanisation, industrial activity, and domestic cooling requirements have driven peak electricity demand from 148 GW in 2014 to over 250 GW in 2024 (with peak demand touching 270 GW in May 2026). Space cooling alone contributed around 60 GW to peak demand.
• Intermittency of Variable Renewable Energy: Solar generation drops during evening hours just as residential cooling demand surges, creating grid balancing challenges in the absence of large-scale battery storage.
• Transmission and Storage Bottlenecks: Evacuating power from resource-rich renewable zones to industrial demand centres is constrained by transmission congestion and slow commissioning of pumped storage hydropower.
• Climate Vulnerability of Power Systems: Extreme summer heatwaves increase electricity demand while simultaneously lowering thermal generation efficiency and straining transmission line capacity (every 1°C temperature rise increases national peak demand by over 7 GW).
• Financial Strains on Distribution Companies (DISCOMs): Inadequate tariff rationalisation, high aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses, and delayed subsidy payments limit investments in modern grid infrastructure.

Measures for Sustainable Energy Security and Economic Growth

• Strategic Expansion of Non-Fossil Capacity: Accelerate solar, wind, and green hydrogen deployments to expand non-fossil capacity beyond 300.5 GW (achieved by mid-2026) toward national Net-Zero 2070 commitments.
• Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) & Supplier Diversification: Expand commercial storage beyond the existing 5.33 MMT SPR capacity and diversify crude supply sources across Latin America, the Middle East, and North America to build strategic import buffers.
• Modernising the Transmission Grid: Expand the Green Energy Corridors (GEC) network and mandate minimum Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and Pumped Storage Projects (PSP) across central and state transmission networks to handle variable loads.
• Promoting Nuclear Energy as Clean Baseload: Advance the deployment of indigenous 700 MWe PHWRs and Prototype Fast Breeder Reactors (PFBR) to expand nuclear generation capacity from 8.78 GW toward 22.38 GW by 2031–32.
• Clean Industrial Electrification: Deploy the National Green Hydrogen Mission to decarbonize hard-to-abate heavy industries (steel, petrochemicals, fertilizers) while scaling up electric mobility.
• Scaling Domestic Clean-Tech Manufacturing: Utilize the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to build domestic manufacturing capacity in high-efficiency solar PV modules, lithium-ion battery cells, and electrolysers.
• Decentralized Renewable Solutions: Expand distributed rural solar energy through the PM-KUSUM scheme, enabling farmers to solarize irrigation pumps and feed surplus power back to the grid.
• Just Transition for Coal Ecosystems: Gradually repurpose exhausted opencast coalfields and retrain fossil-fuel dependent workers in mining regions to support a socially inclusive green transition.

India’s path toward an “energy-secure Viksit Bharat” relies on using the green energy transition as an engine for domestic manufacturing, technological self-reliance, and resilient economic growth.