The next phase of India’s energy transition Ayesha Khosla, Senior Sustainability Strategist at Forum for the Future, explores how India’s renewable energy transition must balance speed and scale with social and ecological responsibility. In this article, she highlights why collaborative, systems-based approaches are essential for building a just and resilient energy future. Reflections from the Responsible Renewable Energy Summit 2026 Until recently, the language of urgency has shaped the energy transition in India so completely that it has almost become difficult to speak about renewable energy outside the vocabulary of capacity addition. India does need to act quickly, but at what cost? Conversations around renewable energy continue to be dominated by ambitions of scale such as bigger targets, faster deployment, and record-breaking installations. But at this year’s Responsible Renewable Energy Summit in New Delhi, convened as part of the Responsible Energy Initiative - India, a more difficult question surfaced repeatedly: Are we solving one problem while creating another? These tensions surfaced across multiple discussions at the Summit, often through practical and operational dilemmas emerging across the sector. Developers spoke about the challenge of balancing meaningful community engagement with project timelines that leave little room for delay. Manufacturers reflected on fragmented ESG expectations from buyers interpreting “responsibility” in very different ways. Others questioned whether circularity is genuinely being designed into renewable energy systems, or whether the sector risks postponing another future waste challenge. Perhaps the most important thread running through the Summit was the growing recognition that scale on its own is no longer enough to hold the transition together. Renewable energy is entering a more complicated phase where it is not only the technical questions, but increasingly the human, operational, and socio-political ones that are becoming harder to ignore. These conversations reflect a broader shift in the sector from asking whether responsible renewable energy matters, to grappling with what responsibility actually looks like in practice once projects move into real landscapes shaped by competing pressures, trade-offs, and constraints. From principles to practice REI’s genesis is rooted in an uncomfortable but essential question: If renewable energy scales rapidly without fundamentally rethinking how projects interact with land, communities, ecosystems, labour, and supply chains, does the transition risk reproducing some of the same extractive patterns it is trying to move away from? A few years ago, even within REI these conversations often felt abstract or conceptual with regards to identification of principles or alignment of intent. This year, they felt far more operational, grounded in project risks and implementation pressure. This shift is possibly one of the most important contributions of platforms like the Responsible Renewable Energy Summit, where the conversation is increasingly moving beyond why responsible renewable energy matters, toward the harder question of what responsibility looks like in practice. At REI, we continue to ask what responsibility can look like in practice for supply chains, labour systems, ecosystems, and the communities living alongside large-scale renewable energy projects. Transitions at this scale inevitably create new pressures, trade-offs, and inequalities, especially when responsibility is treated as something to retrofit later rather than something designed into the system from the outset. A recurring theme across this year’s Summit was the practical challenge of implementing responsible practices in ways that are financially and operationally viable, acknowledging that responsibility often comes with additional costs, time, and complexity. At the same time, the discussions reflected a growing recognition that community and environmental concerns are no longer peripheral sustainability issues, but increasingly central to project risk, resilience, and long-term viability. Land conflicts, biodiversity impacts, local opposition, and supply chain vulnerabilities are now directly shaping project timelines, investor confidence, operational continuity, and reputational credibility. This shift is important because it fundamentally changes how the sector understands project success and long-term value. Implementation as the real work The transition is becoming more complex, not less. Increasingly, the sector is having to navigate difficult questions around how renewable energy can scale rapidly while also building social trust, respecting ecological limits, and strengthening accountability across projects and supply chains. While there is now broad consensus that responsible practices are necessary, there are still very different interpretations of what responsibility in renewable energy should look like in practice. This became evident throughout the Summit discussions, where some of the strongest engagement emerged not during polished presentations, but through grounded conversations around implementation, testing, and lived experience. Participants at the Summit repeatedly returned to practical questions: Could developer guidebooks be meaningfully applied to live projects? Could procurement frameworks influence developer behaviour and create stronger demand for responsible renewable energy? Could companies work collectively to reduce fragmented ESG expectations across supply chains rather than duplicating them This growing focus on implementation was also reflected in the introduction of new tools and resources at the Summit aimed at supporting more responsible deployment. These included a Responsible Renewable Energy Procurement Toolkit developed with Climate Group to enable corporate buyers integrate responsibility considerations into renewable energy sourcing decisions, as well as a Guidebook on Renewable Energy and Biodiversity Net Gain developed by CEEW, focused on integrating social and ecological considerations across project lifecycles. Together, these efforts reflected a broader appetite across the ecosystem for experimentation, practical frameworks, and shared learning. What stood out most was the growing recognition that implementation itself has become the real work of the transition. Not because the sector suddenly has all the answers, but because responsibility is increasingly being shaped through testing, adaptation, and operational experience rather than principle alone. For REI - India, these conversations are also beginning to shape where the next phase of work needs to deepen. The challenge now is less about building awareness around responsible renewable energy, and more about creating the conditions that enable responsible practices to be adopted at scale. Increasingly, this means engaging more directly with the operational realities of the transition: aligning procurement expectations across buyers and developers, integrating biodiversity and community considerations earlier into project planning, supporting implementation pilots that demonstrate what responsible deployment looks like in practice, and creating spaces where industry, policymakers, and communities can learn from lived experience rather than frameworks alone. In many ways, the Summit reflected a more grounded and honest engagement with the realities of implementation. As the transition becomes more complex, India’s renewable energy future will continue to be shaped by speed and scale, but this year’s discussions made increasingly clear that credibility may matter just as much. And credibility is built differently — through trust, demonstrated practice, accountability, and the difficult work of navigating trade-offs in the real world. Perhaps this is where the next phase of responsible renewable energy will ultimately be shaped: not only through targets and commitments, but through the sector learning how to engage with these tensions openly, collectively, and in practice. Manage Cookie Preferences