The Global Wind Energy Council India (GWEC India) and MEC Intelligence (MEC+) announced that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together on building out market intelligence and evidence-driven policy recommendations to accelerate India’s energy transition.

The partnership aims to address key bottlenecks slowing down wind market growth, and illustrate the potential for new growth opportunities such as offshore wind and corporate procurement of renewable energy.

India is currently the fourth-largest onshore wind market in the world and an important economic actor in the global energy transition. Over the last two years, the sector has witnessed a slowdown in wind energy growth, due to a raft of policy, regulatory and infrastructure challenges. Nonetheless, India maintains ambitious wind capacity targets and recognises the crucial role that wind plays in its energy matrix and economic recovery from COVID-19.

Left: Ben Backwell, CEO at GWEC. Right: Sidharth Jain, founder and CEO at MEC+. Credit: GWEC.

This partnership comes at an important time to unlock India’s wind growth and business opportunities and will combine GWEC India’s global experience and industry network with MEC+’s issue-driven understanding of the market as well as expertise in growth drivers for supply chain, technology and business models.

“Although the Indian government has high ambitions for the country’s energy transition, the market reality needs to match these ambitions,” said Ben Backwell, CEO at GWEC.

Backwell continued: “GWEC India’s mission is to renew momentum around wind power development to not only accelerate the decarbonisation of India’s energy system but also to create local jobs and investment opportunities to power a green recovery. Combining GWEC’s world-class experience in building up emerging wind markets with local partner MEC+, which has extensive expertise in the Indian context, we will be able to dive deeper than ever before into key challenges in this crucial market.

According to Backwell, the partnership will not only provide the industry with the knowledge its need to do business in India but will also help ensure that the government’s high ambitions are bolstered by the necessary regulatory frameworks to drive growth.

Sidharth Jain, founder and CEO at MEC+, added: “India’s transition to renewable energy will be pivotal for the global climate change agenda, and over the last few years, we have seen record low prices, innovative business models and increasingly higher ambitious targets.

“The market needs investment in technology as well as supply chain, and long-term clarity on policy is needed to exploit the 50GW of high wind resource potential in the country which is still untapped.”

The MoU builds on the success of the report, India Wind Outlook Towards 2022, published jointly in 2020 which highlighted market challenges and policy reforms needed to restore wind market growth.

Under this enhanced partnership, MEC+ will join GWEC India as a member, further enabling the association’s capacity to improve the environment in India for wind sector growth.

The two organisations will continue to publish an annual report on India’s wind market status and outlook, as well as deep-dives into key system transformation topics. The 2021 edition, expected to publish in April 2021, will spotlight the shift to hybrid tenders, opportunities for corporate procurement of renewable energy and how India can become a wind power manufacturing hub to drive a green recovery.