Budget 2025: Skilling in green energy sector needs urgent attention, says Waaree Energies CEO

Waaree Energies CEO Amit Paithankar

With the Union Budget 2025 now less than a fortnight away, Amit Paithankar, CEO of Waaree Energies Ltd, said the government should focus on three key areas in the renewable energy sector - skilling, R&D and manufacturing.

In an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol, Paithankar emphasised that if mass skilling doesn’t begin now, India could be looking at a workforce crunch in this sunrise industry.

India’s renewable energy sector is witnessing growth, with over 65 GW of module manufacturing capacity already operational and an additional 25 GW of cell manufacturing set to commence soon. He said this rapid expansion is a tremendous opportunity of building a robust, skilled workforce capable of supporting the sector’s ambitious targets of having 500 GW of non-fossil fuel based power generation capacity by 2030.

“The manpower needed to operate this capacity is substantial. For instance, a 1 GW cell manufacturing facility alone requires approximately 400 to 500 skilled individuals across various roles, including engineering, operations, quality assurance and R&D. With every major player in the industry vying for the same pool of talent, the situation has created a competitive bottleneck,” Paithankar said.

To address this, he said, there is a need to invest in skilling programmes tailored to the unique demands of the renewable energy sector. This includes training initiatives for advanced manufacturing processes, such as N-type TOPCon and HJT technologies, modules, cells, ingots and wafers and fostering partnerships between academia, industry, and government bodies.

In the upcoming Budget 2025, Paithankar also sought additional outlay for research and development (R&D) in the sector. “R&D is an often not much talked about in the green energy sector. But it's extremely vital whether it's solar, green hydrogen or batteries. It's one thing to set up manufacturing facilities, and another to continuously innovate and come out with cutting edge technology. Hence, substantial investments need to go for R&D,” he said.

Need non-tariff curbs for ingots and wafers

Now that the Union government has imposed the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) for modules as well as for cells, Paithankar said considering the same for ingots and wafers in a year would help India catch up with backward integration in solar module manufacturing.

“ALMM for cells after modules is a good policy statement. But, a similar thought process given for ingots and wafers would be very helpful. The earlier the government announces an ALMM for ingots and wafers, the faster India’s solar manufacturing ecosystem will grow,” he said.

As of now, the ALMM mandate requires solar projects awarded by central nodal agencies and state distribution utilities to source photovoltaic (PV) modules only from India-based manufacturers included in the ALMM list. This came after local manufacturers lobbied for support from the government as they lost market share to cheap imports.

From June 2026, the government’s mandate would also require solar cells to be sourced only from manufacturers included in the ALMM list.