NEW DELHI, 16th Sept 2026: India’s energy equation is changing fast. At the BNEF Summit New Delhi 2026, six themes showed how oil, renewables, nuclear power, capital, gas and data centres are becoming part of one larger energy-security strategy.

India Energy Security Is Becoming a Bigger, Broader Mission

India is one of the world’s fastest-growing major energy markets. It’s also one of the largest importers of oil and gas and an increasingly important manufacturing base for clean-energy technologies.

That creates a complicated equation.

India needs more energy to support economic growth and rising living standards. At the same time, heavy dependence on imported fuels leaves the country exposed to global price shocks, supply disruptions and currency pressure.

Those tensions dominated discussions at the BNEF Summit New Delhi 2026.

After a year in which the Strait of Hormuz shock pushed oil prices up 30% and the rupee fell 7%, the central question was straightforward: what does India need to build next to strengthen energy security, and how will it be financed?

Six themes stood out.

India has spent an average of more than $10 billion a month on crude oil imports every year since 2023.

The scale explains why energy security cannot simply mean finding reliable suppliers. India also needs reserves, inventories and ownership interests in overseas production.

Girish Tanti, co-founder of Suzlon Group, pointed to the country’s dependence on imports, saying India still relies on imports for about 75% of its oil and 50% of its gas.

The policy response is already visible.

India is building strategic reserves, expanding refining capacity, diversifying import sources and working to revive domestic production. The country is already the world’s fourth-largest refining hub, with capacity expected to reach around 290 million metric tons by the end of 2027.

There’s another layer to the strategy: clean-energy supply chains and large-scale battery storage.

ONGC Executive Director Bijay Rajeeve highlighted a different approach to the storage problem. With limited domestic oil storage, India can secure supplies by acquiring equity oil overseas.

In other words, energy security isn’t only about storing barrels. It can also mean owning part of the supply.

For years, renewables were primarily discussed through the lens of climate change.

That framing is changing.

India’s Secretary for New and Renewable Energy, Santosh Kumar Sarangi, said renewables will become a critical component of India’s energy security in the future.

The reasoning is simple. If renewable power combined with storage can provide dependable electricity around the clock, India can reduce the amount of imported gas or diesel required to support the grid.

And the economics are beginning to catch up.

A recent SECI tender for round-the-clock power, including 90% assured availability during the peak six hours, cleared at about Rs 5.25 per unit. That is among the lowest firm-power tariffs discovered in India.

Tata Power CEO and Managing Director Praveer Sinha also pointed to the growing potential of combining solar, wind, battery storage and pumped hydro to provide firm power.

The question is increasingly less about whether clean electricity can be reliable. It’s about how quickly the infrastructure can be deployed.

The scale of India’s energy transition is enormous.

BloombergNEF’s Energy Transition Scenario estimates that solar and wind could attract around $150 billion in real investment by 2030.

That doesn’t simply create a need for more money. It creates a need for better financial structures.

HSBC Managing Director and Head of Banking Ajay Sharma stressed the importance of tapping different sources of capital while developing financing structures that reflect the risks of newer energy projects.

This matters because clean-energy infrastructure doesn’t always fit neatly into traditional project-finance models.

De-risking mechanisms can make a major difference.

Aanchal Jain, CEO of PMI Electro Mobility Solutions, pointed to government-backed e-bus tenders with payment guarantees. According to her, financing cycles fell from around six months to just over one month after those guarantees were introduced.

That’s the kind of change that can alter project economics without simply throwing more money at the problem.

Nuclear Power Faces a New Commercial Test

Nuclear energy is also moving closer to the centre of India’s energy-security strategy.

India is targeting 100GW of nuclear capacity by 2047, compared with less than 9GW today.

A major policy change came through the Shanti Act, approved by both houses of Parliament in 2025. The legislation opens India’s nuclear sector to private and foreign participation.

Developers including Adani and Jindal Steel are selecting sites and raising capital, with plans involving standardized 700MW reactors across multiple locations.

That brings a new question into the debate: cost.

Jindal Steel President and Head of Sustainability and Decarbonization Naveen Ahlawat said nuclear power would need to compete with other sources on levelized cost of energy.

That commercial discipline is important because nuclear isn’t operating in a vacuum. It will have to compete with renewable power, storage and thermal generation.

Speed is another challenge.

India’s reactors have historically taken around 10 to 12 years to build, roughly twice the timeframe cited for China’s reactor construction. The new fleet approach is expected to test whether standardized designs and private participation can reduce those timelines.

Data Centres Could Become an Energy-Security Opportunity

India’s data-centre electricity demand is expected by BloombergNEF to increase ninefold over the next decade.

At first glance, that sounds like another enormous demand problem.

But developers at the summit argued that data centres could also help unlock investment in generation and transmission.

Large technology companies signing long-term clean-power contracts can provide a stable demand base for renewable projects. That can help anchor capacity that might otherwise struggle to secure financing.

Google Commercial Head, APAC Clean Energy and Power, Srinath Iyer said the value of hyperscaler investment goes beyond simply securing cheap electricity. He highlighted potential benefits for energy security, diversification of the supply mix and the balance of payments.

The bigger bottleneck may not be generation.

It may be transmission.

Schneider Electric Executive Vice President Manish Pant pointed out that India currently consumes around 1,500 kilowatt-hours per person, compared with a global average of around 3,000.

That gap matters.

Whether the demand comes from data centres, factories, transport or households, India needs more electricity infrastructure. The transmission network has to grow with it.

Oil, Gas and Clean Energy Are Being Discussed Together

Perhaps the biggest shift at the summit was that oil and gas weren’t treated simply as the opposing side of the clean-energy transition.

They were discussed as part of the same energy-security equation.

ONGC’s Bijay Rajeeve described India’s priorities as availability, affordability, adaptability and autonomy.

That framework recognizes a basic reality. India will need multiple energy sources while its economy expands and the transition progresses.

Reliance Senior Vice President and Head of Gas Amit Mehta pointed to gas and renewable power working together, particularly for data centres.

India is also diversifying its overseas energy interests.

TotalEnergies India Country Chair Sangkaran Ratnam highlighted the 30% stake jointly held by ONGC, Bharat Petroleum and Oil India in Mozambique LNG. He described the investment as a shift from straightforward procurement toward a more strategic approach to securing supplies.

The Bigger Picture for India

The discussions at BNEF Summit New Delhi 2026 point to an energy strategy that is becoming much more interconnected.

Oil still matters. Gas still matters. Renewables are expanding. Batteries and pumped hydro are becoming increasingly important. Nuclear power is entering a more commercially focused phase. Data centres are creating enormous new demand, while also potentially anchoring fresh investment.

And underneath all of it sits the same issue: infrastructure.

India’s energy challenge isn’t solved by building one technology and switching off another. The country needs supply diversity, stronger transmission networks, storage, overseas energy interests, domestic manufacturing and financing mechanisms capable of supporting projects at scale.

That makes India’s energy transition less of a simple replacement exercise and more of a massive infrastructure buildout.

The next phase will be measured not only in gigawatts, barrels or billions of dollars, but in how effectively those pieces work together.

India’s energy challenge is too large for simplistic either-or thinking. The BNEF Summit discussions show why the country is simultaneously expanding oil security, renewable generation, storage, nuclear capacity, gas infrastructure and transmission.

That isn’t necessarily contradictory. It reflects the scale of India’s energy demand and the realities of an economy still heavily exposed to imported hydrocarbons.

The sharper issue is execution.

Capital has to reach projects efficiently. Transmission needs to keep pace with generation. Storage must become commercially viable at scale. Nuclear projects have to confront cost and construction timelines. Data-centre growth will require serious power infrastructure.

The direction is therefore less about choosing one energy source and more about building an energy system capable of handling all of them.

@shivendraedits