The offshore wind announcements in India have been gathering pace in recent months. The most pertinent of these announcements was in June 2018 by the Indian Ministry of New & Renewable Energy setting an ambitious medium- and long-term offshore wind target of 5 GW by 2022 and 30 GW by 2030.

To meet its 2030 offshore wind target, India will need to install at least 3GW annually over the next decade. Achieving this target will require a titanic effort which will demand planning, resources and policy support at an unprecedented scale.

Among the first offshore capacity planned in India is the 1GW project off the coast of Gujarat in the Gulf of Khambhat. National Institute of Wind Energy floated an expression of interest (EOI) invitation in April 2018 to companies interested in developing the 1GW offshore wind project in Gujarat. Over 35 companies and consortiums responded including international and national developers, utilities, manufacturers, and service companies with experience in different segments of the offshore wind value chain, indicating the developing interest in India's offshore wind sector.

Following the EOI, now the government is working towards floating a tender to invite bids from developers. In the next phase, another 1GW tender is planned off the coast of Tamil Nadu in the Gulf of Mannar.

The government of India expects to create a pipeline of 5 GW of offshore wind projects in the next one to two years in view of commissioning this capacity by 2022. While these plans provide clarity on the volume of market demand in the midterm, however, a clear policy road map and effective support schemes are required to trigger development activity and the build-out of the supply chain in the long-term.

Figure 1: Timeline of India's offshore wind announcements

Learn more about our coverage of the India power and renewables market.

Ankita Chauhan is a Senior Research Analyst for IHS Markit.

Posted 5 February 2019

This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.