Policy Efforts to Meet Ratcheted Ambitions: The Case of Utility-Scale Solar in India

Renewables are expected to play a key role in global low-carbon energy transition, with solar set to drive majority of the growth in the case of India. Since adopting the first solar policy in 2010, India has set ambitious solar energy targets and consistently ratcheted them up. The original goal was to reach 20 GW of capacity by 2022, but this was increased to 100 GW in 2015. Now, India plans to achieve 300 GW of solar capacity by 2030. Despite the under-achievement of the last target, solar deployment reached 63 GW by the end of 2022, three times higher than what was initially planned, mainly led by utility-scale installations. Today the technology continues to experience steady growth. Against this backdrop, we explore the evolution of policy effort accompanying the successful ratcheting up of renewable energy ambitions, focusing on the case of utility-scale solar in India. Specifically, we address two questions - (i) How did solar policy efforts evolve over time and across different levels of governance as the technology matured? And (ii) how did policymakers navigate competing pressures and interests as ambitions were ratcheted up? Using a database of over 500 national and sub-national policies, we measure policy effort through policy density, i.e., the type and number of active policies over time. We then map policy effort alongside technology growth and improvements in cost-competitiveness of solar electricity generation. Our findings reveal four key insights. First, while there are slight variations in policy density across states, sub-national policymaking in India largely mirrors national trends, despite differences in technology growth across states. Second, policy density increases as technology matures, with significant growth in the number and types of policies, despite improvements in cost and competitiveness. Third, policies evolve dynamically over time, becoming more diverse and shifting in focus to address different priorities at various stages of technology growth through distinct instrument clusters. Fourth the evolution of policy efforts highlights two primary rationales influencing policymaking during different phases of technology growth. One is socio-technical, where policies respond to technological and/or contextual needs, such as grid integration at later stages, promoting domestic manufacturing, or protecting developers from financially volatile distribution companies. The second is political, where policy adoption is shaped by politics or external events, such as shifts in ambition under new leadership or protections during and post-covid. These rationales also interact, generating both positive and negative feedback on technology and/or future policy development. An example of this is the growing emphasis on domestic solar manufacturing policies in India, where efforts to balance competing interests inadvertently slowed down technology growth. Our study contributes to the growing body of literature on policy evolution across the phases of renewable technology growth. It also provides a fresh perspective from a developing country context, where similar studies remain limited, and where policymakers face the complex challenge of balancing economic development, meeting rising electricity demand, advancing electricity market liberalisation, and integrating renewable energy.