India to Halt Annual Clean Energy Tender Targets Amid Growing Project Backlog

India will halt setting annual targets for clean energy after missing last year’s goal and building up a large backlog of projects without buyers, reported Reuters.

Developers are already holding the rights to build around 43 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power for which they have yet to find customers. State utilities have delayed buying clean power, expecting prices to fall and citing uncertainty over power delivery due to delays in transmission infrastructure.

India's clean energy ministry has asked renewable implementation agencies to find buyers for the power from those tenders, Reuters reported in November.

"As per their (implementation agencies') initial evaluation, they are still confident that they will be able to sell quite a lot of power out of that (backlog)," Santosh Kumar Sarangi, a top official at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, told Reuters in an interview. Sarangi said less than half of the unsold capacity may be cancelled.

Against this backdrop, the government plans to change how clean energy tenders are issued, moving away from fixed annual targets. Instead, new tenders will be floated only after assessing demand from state power utilities, Sarangi said.

India had initially planned to auction about 50 GW of new clean energy capacity last year but ended up tendering only around 15 GW, after auctioning about 50 GW each in 2023 and 2024.

Despite the slowdown, Sarangi said India remains on track to meet its target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel power capacity by 2030. The country added about 38 GW of clean energy capacity in 2025.

"We are not looking at a figure because we have pending bids that need to be finalised," Sarangi said, adding that agencies are engaging with state governments to assess demand.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy may also consider changes to the structure of renewable energy implementation agencies, he said.

Tendering Market Pressures

India’s tender announcements for utility-scale solar projects declined to about 44 GW in 2025, down 45% from 2024, according to Mercom India Research.

The above report further stated that decline in the solar tender and auction activity in 2025 happened as state DISCOMs showed limited appetite for signing new long-term solar PPAs amid falling daytime power prices and a backlog of awarded solar and wind capacity awaiting power sale agreements.

In addition, procurement increasingly shifted toward round-the-clock and storage-linked tenders, reducing the share of standalone solar auctions. The report underscored that low tariff ceilings, curtailment risks, uncertainty over domestic content requirement and delays in land and transmission availability weakened bid participation—leading several developers to prioritise completing ongoing projects over bidding for new capacity.