Product-Linked Incentives, subsidies detrimental to long-term growth of clean energy sector: Shri Piyush Goyal

Bharat Cleantech Manufacturing Platform to spur innovation, help India become global leader in sustainability: Shri Goyal

Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal unveiled the Bharat Cleantech Manufacturing Platform, an initiative designed to enhance India's cleantech value chains in the solar, wind, hydrogen, and battery storage sectors on Friday at the Bharat Climate Forum 2025 in New Delhi.

During the address, Shri Goyal highlighted that the Product Linked Incentives (PLIs) and subsidies are detrimental to long-term growth and development of the clean energy sector.  He said that the PLI scheme can only help kickstart the sector, but the clean energy sector must strive to become  self-sustaining. The Cleantech sector must become independent of the Government, he added. 

Shri Goyal urged the participants at the event to think innovatively, and increase manufacturing scale in the country. He said that the launch of the Bharat Cleantech Manufacturing Platform will provide an opportunity for the Indian firms to collaborate, to co-innovate and will help provide a platform for financing, to share ideas, technologies and resources. This will help India become an attractive business case and a global leader in the sustainability and cleantech sector, ne added. 

The Minister hoped that the participants at the Forum would be able to achieve the target set by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi of setting up 500 Gigawatt of clean energy sources by 2030 in the country. He noted that India has been one of the best performing countries in terms of meeting the Nationally Determined Contributions (NCDs) submitted in 2015 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. We are well ahead of our targets. We have achieved the target of installing renewable or clean energy by 2022, 8 years ahead of schedule. Having achieved the milestone of setting up 200 Gigawatt of clean energy we are well poised to achieving 500 Gigawatt, he infomed. He further added that India has the largest interconnected grid in the world. 

Respecting the challenges of climate change is not new to India, he pointed out, stating that Gujarat was one of the first states to adopt solar power.  He attributed the affordability of solar power in the country to the Prime Minister and his adoption of transparency, conducting honest auctions and providing equal competition and increasing the scale of implementation significantly. He emphasised that 3S - speed, scale and skill was adopted for the renewable energy programme by the Government led by PM.

Product linked incentives may hinder long term cleantech sustainability; a new manufacturing platform seeks to drive private innovation. The Minister launched the Bharat Cleantech Manufacturing Platform to bolster domestic value chains in solar, wind, hydrogen and battery storage by promoting industry collaboration, co innovation, technology sharing and financing, with the aim of scaling manufacturing capacity and reducing dependence on government support. He warned that Product Linked Incentives and subsidies are short term stimuli detrimental to long term sector growth and urged a shift toward self sustaining private sector development supported by transparent procurement, speed, scale and skill.