India’s Clean Energy Research Trails Manufacturing: Study

As countries prepare for the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31), scheduled to be held in Turkey next month, the summit’s presidency has identified green industrialisation as one of its priority themes. It aims to focus on translating climate commitments into investment and production capacity.

India faces this challenge acutely. Its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commits to a significant expansion of clean power, while its flagship schemes for solar modules, battery cells, and green hydrogen aim to increase domestic manufacturing capacity for these technologies.

The report How Can India Align Its Clean Energy Innovations with Its Ambitions?, accompanied by the interactive tracker India’s Clean Energy RD&D Tracker, presents a comprehensive repository of India’s publicly funded clean energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities to date. Until now, this data has been dispersed across multiple ministries and agencies, each reporting its projects separately, with no single platform providing an overview of the entire landscape.

A new report by the Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC) and the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, brings together data on 1,359 publicly funded projects across more than 90 institutions, active between 2019 and 2024. The projects received approximately Rs. 1,443 crore (USD 151 million) in declared funding. The report covers six areas: renewables; power and storage; hydrogen and fuel cells; transport and e-mobility; energy efficiency; and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

The central finding is not necessarily that India’s RD&D priorities are misplaced. Rather, the balance between deployment, manufacturing capabilities, and technology leadership appears to have emerged from numerous independent funding decisions, without an explicit portfolio-level strategy evident in the public record.

Why India’s Clean Energy Research Funding Is Concentrated in Solar

The research found that energy funding is heavily concentrated in solar, with renewables and power and storage together accounting for nearly three-quarters of declared spending, amounting to approximately Rs. 1,073 crore. Solar photovoltaic (PV) research alone receives Rs. 401 crore (USD 42 million), more than the combined funding for hydrogen, energy efficiency, transport, and carbon capture.

The research examines opportunities to build domestic capabilities through India’s public RD&D ecosystem.

The report does not seek to evaluate the performance of individual ministries, funding agencies, or research institutions. Instead, it systematically compiles and maps India’s publicly funded clean energy RD&D ecosystem to support greater transparency and evidence-based discussions on research priorities, funding patterns, and innovation capabilities.

Key Findings

Existing Technologies Receive Much of the Focus

The study found that approximately 81% of projects focused on improving or adapting technologies that were already in commercial use. Around 67% of projects focused on products rather than the processes through which they are manufactured. Process research, which is more directly linked to manufacturing capabilities, accounts for approximately one-third of projects but only one-fifth of total spending.

Grants Are Small and Strikingly Uniform

Around 68% of projects received grants of less than Rs. 50 lakh (USD 52,000). The median grant size varied little across technology areas, ranging from Rs. 33 lakh to Rs. 39 lakh. By comparison, typical applied research awards from the US Department of Energy range from USD 1 million to USD 5 million.

Funding Is Concentrated Among a Limited Number of Institutions

The top 20 institutions account for 68% of all projects. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) funds just over half (52%) of all projects through numerous small grants, while the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) supports a smaller number of much larger programmes.

The study raises a broader strategic question for India: should it support a broad portfolio of exploratory research across multiple technology areas, or concentrate resources on a smaller number of strategically important capabilities?

Limitations of the Study

The findings are based on publicly available disclosures, making the dataset a large sample rather than a complete census of India’s clean energy RD&D activities. Budget information is missing for approximately 16% of projects, while start years are unavailable for 39%.

Private-sector research, which accounts for roughly half of India’s national research and development (R&D) spending, is not captured. Demonstration projects and industry-linked research are also likely to be undercounted. The tracker is an evolving resource and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Commenting on the report, Kashmeera Patel, Senior Research Associate at SFC, said, “India is rapidly deploying clean energy, but it still imports much of the technology behind it. Building our own technology base starts with knowing where public research money goes today. As COP31 turns attention to how countries will build and share the next generation of clean technologies, this evidence can help India decide where to focus next.”

Easwaran J. Narassimhan, Co-Director of the Climate Policy Lab and Assistant Professor at Tufts University, and Visiting Fellow at SFC, said, “For emerging economies, understanding their green comparative advantage and investing strategically to develop it is essential to building a compelling growth coalition around climate action. Our study of India’s clean energy RD&D activities highlights the need for a strategic alignment of India’s innovation activities with its manufacturing and deployment ambitions for it to build comparative advantage and create more economic value and employment opportunities in climate action.”