New Delhi: Indian industry burns fossil fuel to make heat, and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) wants pilot projects that show solar can take some of that load. The ministry has issued a call for proposals seeking concentrating solar thermal (CST) installations built into working industrial processes. The ministry will meet up to half the capital cost of the projects it selects. Each award is capped at Rs 2 crore, and the support may come as Viability Gap Funding (VGF).
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The window is short. Submissions opened on September 8 and close on October 7, and proposals have to go through MNRE's research portal.
What the ministry is after is set out plainly in the call. "The objective is to accelerate the adoption of concentrating solar thermal (CST) technology for various heating applications in Indian Industry," it states, going on to describe the wider aim as accelerating "the adoption of Green Heat in Indian industry by promoting solar thermal technologies integrated with Thermal Energy Storage (TES), for clean, reliable, sustainable process heating applications and promoting indigenous technology development in efficient and cost-effective manner across the country."
The call is not looking for laboratory work. "The thrust of the problem statement is to be on identifying commercially viable, scalable solar thermal solutions," it says, and the gap it identifies is one of demonstration rather than invention. "There is a need to pilot and demonstrate scalable solar thermal heating solutions integrated with existing industrial processes, with appropriate thermal storage and hybrid systems, to reduce fossil fuel consumption," the document states.
The bar set for those pilots is commercial. Each one, according to the call, "should establish technical feasibility, economic viability, scalability and replicability, thereby creating a pathway for commercial deployment and large scale replacement of fossil-fuel-based industrial heating."
That ambition carries an obligation that will outlast the installation itself. "The developer shall be responsible for operation and maintenance (O&M) of the installed system for a minimum period of five years to ensure sustained performance and reliability," the call states. Five listed activities sit around the hardware: picking and prioritising industrial clusters, running the pilots, documenting case studies of successful CST installations, drawing up design and retrofitting guidelines with technology suppliers and end-users, and building replicable business models to push the technology into wider commercial use.
The call maps out what is already on the market and what each type can deliver. Parabolic trough systems, which it notes are widely used in solar-thermal power generation, are listed at 60 to 400 degrees Celsius. Linear Fresnel technology (LFR) covers 60 to 250 degrees and suits direct steam generation. Parabolic dish runs from 100 to 500 degrees, and power tower technology from 150 to 600, with the call noting that even higher temperatures are possible.
Two entries sit outside the classical concentrator family. Solar photovoltaic (PV) coupled with heat pumps is listed at up to 90 degrees Celsius or more, using PV electricity to drive hot water and low- to medium-temperature process heat. CST paired with thermal energy storage is listed separately for what storage adds, which the call describes as continuous process heat "through thermal energy storage during non-sunshine hours."
None of this is meant as a closed list. "The technologies listed are only indicative and in no way exhaustive," the document says.
Rather than name target industries in the abstract, the call sets out a grid of 18 sectors against 10 processes, and marks which combinations CST can serve. The processes are cleaning, drying, evaporation, distillation, pasteurisation, sterilisation, cooking, process heating, boiler feed water heating and cooling.
The sectors span most of the industrial base. Chemicals and pharmaceuticals are listed at 50 to 300 degrees Celsius, textile dyeing at 50 to 250, pulp and paper at 50 to 240, dairy up to 180, food processing at 50 to 180, breweries up to 150 and automotive at 50 to 150. Leather and footwear, rubber, and plastics and polymers fall between 200 and 300 degrees. The hospitality sector, at up to 90 degrees, sits at the bottom of the range.
Heavy industry appears with much higher headline temperatures — ceramics, iron and steel and non-ferrous metals up to 1,800 degrees Celsius, cement and glass up to 1,500, and petroleum refineries up to 1,200. What the grid marks against those sectors, though, is not the furnace. For cement, the boxes ticked are process heating, boiler feed water heating and cooling, and for iron and steel, the same three. The call leaves the door open beyond the table with a single line: "Or any other application for Green heat for industry."
MNRE has set out roles for each party. The ministry itself provides the partial capex support, selects and approves the pilots, and monitors progress with replication and scale-up in view. Cluster and industry associations are to run the outreach, identify suitable beneficiary units and help spread results within the cluster.
The industrial host carries more than the site. It is to identify the process heat application, provide land and access for the duration, hand over baseline and operational data, secure approvals, contribute its own share of the project cost and support installation and operation.
The technology provider or system integrator takes the technical end, like, site assessment, technology selection, design, supply, installation and commissioning, integration with the industrial process, training, and the five-year O&M and performance monitoring, along with the measurement and verification that confirms agreed performance is met. The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) are named to identify clusters and beneficiary industries, run consultations, and support technical evaluation and technology-industry matching.
Eligibility runs to "industries engaged in the manufacture, development, deployment, or utilisation of solar thermal technologies, including beneficiary industries utilising solar thermal systems in consortium mode." On the funding side, the ministry says it "encourages research and technology development proposals and provides upto 50 percent financial support to Industry/Start-ups/Private Institutes/Entrepreneurs."
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Proposals will be assessed against the implementation guidelines for the Renewable Energy Research and Technology Development (RE-RTD) Programme dated July 17, and a dedicated committee is to be constituted to evaluate them. The RE-RTD Programme itself was cleared in July with an outlay of Rs 436.93 crore for the five years from 2026-27 to 2030-31.