India's Renewables Have Saved $100 Billion in Fuel Imports, IEA Says

OilPrice.com · Haley Zaremba · 2026-11-05 22:00 UTC

IEA says renewables saved India more than $100 billion in coal and gas imports since 2011, and the Hormuz shock is widening the gap.

India’s clean energy growth is far surpassing expectations and quickly establishing the world’s most populous country as one of the major global players in clean energy markets. India is now the second-fastest-growing clean energy market in the world, and the world’s second-largest producer of solar panels, following China. And according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the country’s embrace of clean energy as a key part of its economic development is already paying off.

The IEA’s India Renewable Energy Market Report 2026 finds that “Renewable electricity saved India more than USD 100 billion in coal and natural gas import costs between 2011 and 2025, with cumulative savings expected to more than double by 2030,” notes an IEA news article accompanying the report’s release. “Without the solar PV, wind and bioenergy capacity added since 2010, India’s coal imports in 2025 would have been around 110 million tonnes higher,” the article goes on to detail.

Those savings are likely to be even more significant for 2026, thanks to the extreme energy market turmoil introduced by the United States’ and Israel’s war in Iran. The energy shock driven by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for the world’s oil and gas trade, caused increased global competition over scarce energy resources, causing prices to skyrocket. And no market was hit harder than Asia.

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