Kazakhstan, sitting on its own wind and hydro resources, now has to watch. India is pulling European capital toward its manufacturing floor, not just its power lines. That changes the game for Central Asian exporters who hoped to sell electricity southward.
Bard Vegar Solhjell, CEO of Renewables Norway, told ANI that India should be seen as a critical partner and a manufacturing powerhouse. He named three sectors where Norway’s century of hydro experience matches India’s grid needs: hydropower, offshore wind, and carbon capture and storage.
Norway gets roughly 90 percent of its electricity from hydro. India, building out variable solar and wind at speed, needs storage. “I think it’s an area where we can have common ground,” Solhjell said.
The comparison with past energy partnerships is instructive. In the 2000s, European firms poured capital into Chinese solar manufacturing.
That made panels cheap, but it also built China’s industrial base. India appears to be repeating the playbook, only this time it wants to host the factories itself. Solhjell framed the opportunity in commercial terms.
Norwegian firms see India carrying “immense commercial and strategic weight,” he said. If New Delhi reaches its “very ambitious goals,” he added, it “could be the most important thing for the global climate.” That is not the kind of language European industry bodies used for Kazakhstan a decade ago. Back then, the talk was about resource extraction, not manufacturing partnerships.
Kazakhstan’s hydro potential on the Irtysh and Ili rivers attracted feasibility studies, not factory commitments. Its wind corridor in the Dzungarian Gate drew interest from German developers, but the projects stayed small.
India offers scale. India offers a domestic market of 1.4 billion people. Kazakhstan offers transit routes.
The trade geometry has shifted. For a resource-rich neighbour like Kazakhstan, the message is clear.
India is not just buying equipment. It is positioning itself as a manufacturing base. That pulls the same European capital that might have gone into Central Asian wind farms.
Solhjell did not offer investment figures or timelines. He described offshore wind and carbon capture as still in their infancy for both countries. But the strategic direction is set.
There is a historical echo here. In the 1970s, Japan moved heavy industry offshore to Southeast Asia.
In the 1990s, European automakers built plants in Eastern Europe. Each time, the host economies absorbed technology and climbed the value chain. India is now the host.
The difference is speed. India’s clean-energy targets are measured in years, not decades.
Solhjell, a former Norwegian minister of education and minister of environment, pointed to that urgency. Kazakhstan’s own energy export calculus now has to account for a neighbour that wants to be a competitor, not just a customer. The country has hydro and wind potential, but it lacks India’s market size and its political will to manufacture.
That will matter when European renewable firms decide where to put their next factory. Solhjell did not name any competitors. He did not have to.
The math does the work. India’s economic growth and clean-energy targets are creating what he called a strategic opening.
For Central Asia, that opening looks like a closing door.
