Kickstarting India’s offshore wind market: Lessons from India’s early tenders

India has struggled to launch its offshore wind market despite a decade of policy efforts, with two major auctions called off in 2025. The brief identifies rigid pricing structures, a lack of local supply chains for high-capacity turbines, and transmission risks as primary barriers. It argues that India should move away from blunt competitive auctions for first-of-a-kind projects and instead adopt global best practices, such as flexible tariffs, 'ready-to-build' tender packages, and compensation for grid delays, to attract investment and develop domestic industry.

• India's early attempts to launch an offshore wind market have failed, with two landmark auctions being called off in 2025 due to muted developer interest.
• The 500 MW offshore wind auction in Gujarat failed because its fixed tariff of INR 4.50/kWh and capped subsidy of INR 8.128 crore per MW did not account for the actual cost of generation, which was approximately INR 5/kWh higher than the tariff even after the viability gap funding subsidy.
• A significant barrier to deployment is the lack of a domestic supply chain capable of producing the 10+ MW turbines common in global offshore markets, as Indian manufacturers currently focus on 2-3 MW onshore turbines.
• India's tendering model failed to provide financial compensation for lost revenue if the central transmission utility delayed grid readiness, contrasting with European TSOs like TenneT that compensate developers for such lags.
• The Gujarat sites had a lower capacity utilisation factor (CUF) of approximately 36%, which is below the international benchmark of 40-50%, whereas Tamil Nadu sites have a higher potential CUF of approximately 60%.

APA

Das, D., & Rodrigues, N. (2025). Kickstarting India’s offshore wind market: Lessons from India’s early tenders. Ember. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/11/Policy-Paper_-Kickstarting-Indias-offshore-wind-market.pdf

Chicago

Das, Duttatreya, and Neshwin Rodrigues. Kickstarting India’s offshore wind market: Lessons from India’s early tenders. Ember, 2025. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/11/Policy-Paper_-Kickstarting-Indias-offshore-wind-market.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Das |first1=Duttatreya |last2=Rodrigues |first2=Neshwin |title=Kickstarting India’s offshore wind market: Lessons from India’s early tenders |publisher=Ember |date=17 November 2025 |url=https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/11/Policy-Paper_-Kickstarting-Indias-offshore-wind-market.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{das2025kickstarting, author = {Das, Duttatreya and Rodrigues, Neshwin}, title = {{Kickstarting India’s offshore wind market: Lessons from India’s early tenders}}, institution = {Ember}, year = {2025}, month = nov, url = {https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/11/Policy-Paper_-Kickstarting-Indias-offshore-wind-market.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }