CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Bhowmik, Senjuty |
|---|---|
| Title | Market Advantage or Policy Effort: Drivers of Utility-Scale Solar Growth in India |
| Summary | Accelerating the low-carbon energy transition requires rapid deployment of renewable energy (RE) technologies, especially in developing countries like India. A key question is – how much of this acceleration can be left to technology cost decline, and how much must be actively steered by policymakers? On this, the literature remains divided, with disagreements along temporal and spatial dimensions. Over time, some argue that falling costs reduce the need for policies as market forces take over. Others emphasise that technological growth continually reveals new barriers that demand sustained policy support. Across space, they argue that developing countries can benefit from technology learning and transfer from pioneering countries. Others emphasise that higher investment risk in developing countries impedes transfer, requiring active policy engagement. To arbitrate between the two sides, I examine the case of utility-scale solar in India, across both temporal (2004–2024) and spatial (18 states) dimensions. This is because understanding the relative role of cost decline and policies in shaping future RE growth, in developing countries, requires examining their relative role in past accelerations. Since 2014, utility-scale solar in India has been undergoing such acceleration. To investigate, I develop a four-step semi-quantitative approach that integrates the techno-economic, political, and socio-technical perspectives on energy transitions. I track cost trends using cost and price parity specific to Indian states. I measure policy effort by tracing the evolution of policy ambitions, and through the density and diversity of policy measures, using an original classification scheme. Then I map how costs and policies co-evolve with technology growth, shaped by the changing capacities and motivations of two main actors — public procurers, who contract solar electricity, and private developers, who install solar power projects. I establish causal links through process tracing. Throughout, I account for federal and state-level differences. I find that, despite significant cost decline and the country’s strong market advantage, utility-scale solar in India has been and continues to be policy-driven. As solar deployment grew, more numerous and diverse policies became necessary to address evolving barriers. I systematically show what these barriers are at different levels of deployment. Compared with technology-pioneering countries, system integration and grid expansion policies emerged earlier, whereas domestic manufacturing policies appeared later, underscoring that developing countries cannot simply leapfrog on technological progress alone. Tracing technology-cost-policy feedbacks revealed that while policies consistently enabled growth, they also sometimes constrained it. Growth slowed due to backlash not from incumbent industries but from within the niche industry itself, when industry groups did not gain equally from accelerated deployment. Throughout, while declining cost did not displace the need for policy support, it created space for tougher and more ambitious policymaking. Finally, despite strong policy involvement, solar growth sub-nationally remained highly uneven, with no evidence of convergence between early and late adopting regions. In fact, technology-cost-policy feedback reinforced spatial divergence, raising questions on the compatibility of RE acceleration with equitable development. For policymakers and other energy policy scholars, this dissertation offers an in-depth insight into the policy effort required to accelerate renewables in a developing country context. |
| Supervisor | Cherp, Aleh; Jewell, Jessica; LaBelle, Michael |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/bhowmik_senjuty.pdf |
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