New Delhi is not waiting for European companies to knock. It is building the grid that will need them. India’s power ministry has already approved 50 pumped-storage hydro projects with a combined capacity of over 60 gigawatts.
That is the kind of number that makes Norwegian engineers pay attention. Norway gets roughly 90 percent of its electricity from hydropower, a capability built over a century.
Bard Vegar Solhjell, CEO of Renewables Norway, told ANI that his country’s history with hydro gives it something to offer India’s grid planners. The Indian government’s National Electricity Plan calls for 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. Solar and wind make up the bulk of that.
Both are variable. Both need storage.
Solhjell pointed to hydropower, offshore wind, and carbon capture as the three sectors where Norwegian expertise matches India’s needs. “I think it’s an area where we can have common ground,” he said. Norway is not the only country watching.
Kazakhstan, with its own hydro and wind potential, competes for the same European capital now flowing toward India’s scale. The trade geometry shifts when a country stops being just a buyer and becomes a manufacturing base. Solhjell framed India’s role as carrying “immense commercial and strategic weight.” That is not diplomatic language.
That is a market assessment. Indian institutions are already moving.
The National Institute of Wind Energy has mapped offshore wind zones off the coasts of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has set a target of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. That is ambitious.
Norway’s offshore wind sector is still in its infancy too, Solhjell noted. Both countries are learning together.
Carbon capture and storage is even earlier stage. India’s Department of Science and Technology runs a research program on carbon capture, utilization, and storage. The country’s first pilot-scale carbon capture plant, at the NTPC thermal plant in Dadri, started operating in 2022.
It captures about 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day. That is a drop. But it is a start.
Solhjell did not offer investment figures or timelines. He did not need to.
The commercial logic is visible. India’s grid needs storage. Norway has storage expertise.
The match is structural, not promotional. For New Delhi, the timing works.
The government’s Production-Linked Incentive scheme for solar manufacturing is already drawing foreign investment. Norwegian companies see a market that is building its own supply chains. That changes the calculation from selling equipment to building partnerships.
The former Norwegian minister of education and minister of environment put it bluntly. If India reaches its “very ambitious goals,” he said, it “could be the most important thing for the global climate.” That is not a prediction. It is a statement of what is at stake.
