New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a clear-cut message for investors at the Bharat Renewable Energy (BRE) Summit & Expo 2026 on Monday. India will add another 500 gigawatts (GW) of non-fossil fuel capacity over the next 10 to 11 years, he told them, but generating green power is no longer enough on its own. The next phase, as Modi laid it out, rests on moving that power to where it is needed, storing it with indigenous technology, and running India’s kitchens and vehicles on it. Referring to the global crisis continuing in West Asia, he made a clear call to cut the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.
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Modi pitched the agenda directly to investors. “For all of you, for investors across the world, India is opening up enormous opportunities,” he said. India offers demand, scale and scope “difficult to find elsewhere,” along with political and policy stability, he added. By the end of the decade, Modi estimated, the sector will create investment opportunities worth more than Rs 20 lakh crore, about USD 220 billion.
Behind the pitch was an argument about energy security. This year had been “largely dominated by discussions around energy shocks,” Modi said, with the crisis in West Asia “still continuing.” The crisis carried “a clear message to every country: energy security is directly linked to economic security,” he said. “And we all know that the future of energy security lies in clean energy.”
Fossil fuel reserves are limited and concentrated in only a few regions, Modi said. Excessive dependence on them will therefore leave the global economy facing “repeated disruptions.” India itself would have fared worse without its clean energy investments over the past decade, he said. Without them, “our crisis could have been far more severe than that faced by the rest of the world.”
At the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP-26) to the UN climate convention in 2021, India committed to 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030. It has “already achieved nearly 300 gigawatts” towards that goal, Modi said. In 2025, he added, India met its Paris pledge to source half its installed power capacity from non-fossil fuels, five years ahead of schedule.
“Over the next 10 to 11 years, our effort is to add another 500 gigawatts of new non-fossil fuel capacity,” Modi said. “This target is somewhat challenging, but I have full confidence in the capabilities of my country. And therefore, I say: We will do it!”
Capacity alone will not deliver the transition, Modi said. “All of you experts know that merely generating electricity is not enough,” he said. “It is equally important to distribute it efficiently and deliver it where it is needed.”
Solar and wind power is generated more abundantly in some regions than in others. The green energy corridors, a dedicated network of transmission lines and substations, are making it easier to move that power from where it is produced to where it is needed, Modi said. The government recently set an investment target of nearly Rs 2 lakh crore for the corridors’ next phase. That phase builds on the integration of five regional grids into a single national grid running at a common frequency, he said.
On the demand side, Modi turned to the household. He urged startups, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), innovators and entrepreneurs to “create models where as many household needs as possible can be met through solar power.” Those models must supply power “twenty-four hours a day and in every season,” he said.
Modi called for households to cook on their own rooftop solar power. “We must move towards a situation where a family can cook food using electricity generated by the solar plant installed on its own rooftop,” he said. “We need to launch a clean cooking movement. Dependence on imported gas should be reduced as much as possible.”
He extended the idea to transport. More middle-class families should be able to charge electric scooters, bikes and cars at home using power from their own solar systems, Modi said. “This can save middle-class families thousands of rupees every year.”
Storage was where Modi’s appeal to investors was most direct. “None of this will be possible without next-generation innovation,” he said. “We need indigenous storage solutions. We need to build new battery storage capacity.” Calling it “a tremendous opportunity,” he urged “everyone in the world of research and all investors not to let this opportunity pass by.” The solutions developed in India “will serve many countries around the world,” he said.
Modi pointed to the investment the sector has already drawn. More than Rs 15 lakh crore, or USD 164 billion, has gone into renewable energy over the past decade, he said. Nearly Rs 6 lakh crore, more than USD 63 billion, has come in since the RE-INVEST summit in 2024.
Domestic manufacturing has grown alongside it. Solar module manufacturing capacity stood at only about 2 GW a decade ago and has now crossed 200 GW, Modi said. Solar cell manufacturing capacity has reached nearly 40 GW.
On the consumer side, more than 65 lakh homes have joined the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana since its launch in February 2024, Modi said. The scheme targets rooftop solar on one crore homes. He cited a study showing that electricity bills for these households had fallen by nearly 76 percent. Under the KUSUM scheme, more than 30 lakh farmers have received solar-powered irrigation, he said.
Farmers should now go beyond solar pumps, Modi said. “My vision is that the Annadata should also become an Urjadata - the food provider should become an energy provider,” he said. He called for farmers to install solar panels on unused land and along the boundaries of their fields.
India’s clean energy push does not stop at solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power, Modi said. Under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, the country is moving in mission mode to produce 50 lakh tonnes of green hydrogen by the end of the decade, and it is bringing green hydrogen into transport as well. “Just a few months ago, India launched its first Green Hydrogen Train,” he said.
Green hydrogen also has a place at the summit itself, which is being held alongside the fourth International Conference on Green Hydrogen (ICGH) and the ninth Assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA). That, Modi said, made the scale of this year’s event “very large.” With delegates from abroad in the audience, he presented India’s clean energy schemes as useful to other countries. They could strengthen energy security in many of them, he said, especially in the Global South.
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Modi tied this outreach to India’s message of “One Earth, One Family, One Future,” which he said was also the thinking behind the ISA. The aim, he said, is to ensure that the funding, technology and expertise needed for renewable energy “reach every country that needs them.” It was with this aim that a proposal for a USD 200 million Africa Solar Facility had been put forward, Modi said.