India’s energy story is moving from adding generation capacity to building the transmission, storage and demand-management systems needed to use that power reliably. A projection presented by Hitachi Energy India points to total final energy demand rising 50% and electricity demand doubling to 3,365 TWh by 2035, while Jefferies’ Christopher Wood has identified energy as the country’s strongest structural growth theme.
The numbers, if realised, would represent more than a larger power market. They would signal a deeper shift in how Indian cities, factories, transport systems and commercial buildings consume energy. Electricity would account for 25% of total final energy demand in 2035, up from 19% in 2023, according to the presentation cited in the Economic Times report. That rising share places greater pressure on the grid and makes transmission infrastructure as important as power generation.
The central urban question is therefore not only whether India can produce more electricity. It is whether the country can move, balance and deliver that electricity across rapidly expanding cities and industrial corridors, particularly as renewable generation changes the timing and location of supply.
India’s electricity system is entering a more demanding phase
The growth outlook described by Hitachi Energy India’s chief executive, Venu Nuguri, combines two separate but connected trends. Total final energy demand is projected to rise by half, while electricity demand is expected to double. This implies that electricity will take a larger role in meeting industrial, commercial and household energy needs.
The increase in electricity’s share of final energy demand is linked in the cited presentation to a surge in renewables, improved storage and smarter demand management. Those three elements are connected. Solar generation can add large volumes of relatively low-cost power, but its output varies through the day. Storage can help shift electricity to periods of higher demand, while demand management can reduce pressure on the grid by changing when consumers use power.
For cities, this has practical consequences. Electricity demand is not limited to homes and offices. It is also embedded in water pumping, sewage treatment, metro systems, public lighting, data infrastructure, commercial cooling, construction activity and industrial supply chains. As these systems expand, the reliability of the network becomes a constraint on urban growth.
The report does not provide a city-level breakdown of the projected demand or specify the investment required to meet it. It does, however, establish the scale of the national transition being discussed: electricity demand could reach 3,365 TWh by 2035, with electricity accounting for a larger proportion of the energy system than it did in 2023.
Why transmission is the infrastructure hinge
Christopher Wood’s identification of Hitachi Energy India as a “picks-and-shovels” play focuses attention on the equipment and networks that enable the energy transition. The company’s expertise in transmission makes it a beneficiary, in Wood’s view, of the expansion of renewable power and electrification.
The transmission emphasis is significant because adding renewable generation does not automatically create usable electricity for every demand centre. Power must be transported from generating areas to cities, industrial clusters and other consumers. The grid also has to manage changing flows as renewable output rises and falls.
A generation-led view of the transition can obscure this network requirement. Solar parks, wind projects and storage installations are visible assets, but transmission lines, substations, transformers and grid-management systems determine whether new generation can be integrated at scale. The energy transition therefore involves a distributed infrastructure build-out rather than a single technology substitution.
The supplied report does not quantify India’s transmission investment pipeline or identify specific projects. It does indicate why transmission has emerged as a strategic theme for investors and industrial companies: the expected growth in electricity demand requires supporting infrastructure that can connect supply to consumers and manage a more variable power system.
Storage is the unresolved part of the model
Storage is presented as one of the conditions that could allow renewable energy to reshape the cost of power. Wood said China has already reached a point where solar is cheaper than coal because of battery storage technology. If a similar outcome develops in India, the report says, lower power costs could support the country’s manufacturing ambitions.
That comparison comes with a clear limitation. Wood said it remains uncertain how much India will be able to benefit from China’s battery storage technology. The report cites several developments involving Chinese technology and Indian companies, but it does not establish that India has secured the same scale, cost structure or manufacturing ecosystem as China.
According to the report, Bloomberg had reported that Reliance Industries was in talks with CATL to procure components for battery energy storage systems. The GREED & fear report said Reliance had not succeeded in procuring technology from CATL or other Chinese battery makers. Indian companies including Exide Industries, Amara Raja and Waaree Energies were reported to have secured Chinese battery technology, while Energy In Motion, an associate company of Ravindra Energy, partnered with CATL for the supply of 500 MWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries for electric heavy-duty trucks in India.
These examples show that storage is not only a power-sector issue. It is also linked to industrial policy, battery supply chains and transport electrification. Yet the evidence supplied does not establish whether these individual arrangements can be scaled into a broad, domestically supported storage ecosystem. That remains one of the important uncertainties in the energy outlook.
The manufacturing link is important but conditional
Wood’s broader argument is that cheaper and more reliable electricity could reinforce India’s manufacturing expansion. The report notes that India is already second only to China in several traditional manufacturing areas, including crude steel, cement, ammonia, mobile phones and solar modules. It also records a substantial production gap in two of those sectors.
China produced 960.8 million tonnes of crude steel and 1,700 million tonnes of cement in the previous year, compared with India’s 164.9 million tonnes of crude steel and 470 million tonnes of cement, according to the figures cited. The comparison shows both India’s existing industrial scale and the distance it would need to cover to approach China.
Energy costs and reliability can influence that gap, particularly for electricity-intensive production. However, the supplied evidence supports a conditional interpretation rather than a guaranteed outcome. Lower-cost solar combined with storage could improve the competitiveness of Indian manufacturing, but the report does not demonstrate that this transition has already occurred at scale in India.
The same applies to the relationship between energy infrastructure and urban development. Industrial expansion can increase demand for housing, transport, logistics and municipal services around manufacturing centres. If power supply grows without corresponding improvements in these systems, the benefits of electrification may remain uneven across regions and user groups.
The policy challenge extends beyond renewable capacity
The outlook described in the report places several responsibilities across the energy system. Renewable developers must add generation. Transmission companies and equipment manufacturers must expand the network. Storage companies must establish a reliable technology and supply base. Utilities and system operators must manage fluctuating supply and changing demand.
Demand management is particularly important because it shifts attention from supply alone to how electricity is consumed. The Hitachi Energy India presentation linked the expected rise in electricity’s share of final energy demand to improved storage and smart demand management. The report does not specify the programmes, regulatory mechanisms or technologies that would deliver this improvement.
That institutional detail matters. A larger grid requires coordination between generation, transmission, distribution and end users. Urban local bodies also depend on electricity-intensive infrastructure but generally do not control the national power system. Their ability to plan public services around future demand will depend on the reliability and affordability of the networks serving them.
The evidence therefore points to an infrastructure transition that cannot be assessed only through installed renewable capacity. Transmission readiness, storage availability, industrial technology access and demand management are equally relevant measures of whether electrification is progressing effectively.
What the evidence confirms—and what remains open
The supplied figures confirm the scale of the expected change: total final energy demand is projected to rise 50%, electricity demand is projected to double to 3,365 TWh by 2035, and electricity’s share of final energy demand is expected to increase from 19% in 2023 to 25%. The report also identifies transmission, storage and renewable generation as connected parts of the growth story.
What remains less certain is how quickly the supporting infrastructure will be built, how much battery technology India can access or develop, and whether lower renewable power costs will be achieved at the scale required by manufacturing. The report also does not establish how the national projection will translate into demand across individual cities, states or industrial corridors.
India’s energy transition is consequently becoming a test of network capacity and institutional coordination, not merely a race to add renewable generation. The next evidence to watch will be the development of transmission systems, storage procurement and technology partnerships capable of supporting the projected demand by 2035.
