India is entering a fundamentally different era of energy.

For decades, our challenge was simple: Produce more energy. Coal, oil, gas, renewables and nuclear could each be planned independently because each largely operated within its own ecosystem.

That world has disappeared.

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Today’s challenge is no longer producing energy. It is optimising an increasingly complex energy system.


A unit of solar power generated at noon has a different value from a unit of hydro power during the evening peak. Batteries, pumped storage and gas turbines all exist to balance renewable generation. Nuclear provides a steady baseload. Coal increasingly provides flexibility rather than simply volume. Every source now plays a different role at a different time of the day.

Most importantly, every one of them depends on the same electricity grid.

This changes how governments need to think about energy.

India, however, still governs the sector as though every fuel exists in isolation. Coal sits in one ministry. Oil and gas in another. Renewables in a third. Electricity in a fourth. Nuclear in a fifth. Each ministry has capable people and well-defined objectives. But each is optimising only one part of the system. Nobody is responsible for optimising the whole.

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That may have worked in the 20th century. It does not work for the 21st.

The consequences are visible across the sector. Renewable projects are commissioned before transmission is ready. Gas-based plants were built without assured fuel. Coal production, imports, railway logistics and electricity demand have at times moved on different trajectories. Each ministry has largely achieved its own objectives, yet the overall system has often fallen short.

The problem is not policy. It is governance.

Energy security today is no longer about having enough coal or enough renewable capacity. It is about ensuring the entire system works as one.

That requires integrated planning across generation, fuel supply, transmission, storage and demand. Every investment should be evaluated based on how it improves the performance of the whole energy system, not one technology in isolation.

Many countries have already recognised this reality. The United States, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom have unified energy ministries responsible for looking across the entire energy landscape rather than individual fuels.

India should do the same.

A single Ministry of Energy would not eliminate specialised expertise. Coal, oil, renewables and nuclear would continue to need dedicated departments and technical institutions. But strategy would come from one place. Infrastructure would be planned as one system. Investment decisions would be made with a single objective: Delivering the lowest-cost, most reliable and most secure energy mix for India.


As India moves towards becoming a developed economy, energy will become one of our biggest competitive advantages — or one of our biggest constraints.

Our institutions need to evolve as quickly as our energy system has.

Creating a unified Ministry of Energy may well be the single most important governance reform India can undertake to strengthen its long-term energy security.

The writer is chairman, Resonia and Serentica Renewables and managing director, Sterlite Electric