New Delhi: Green energy investments in India are set to gain momentum and expand further, driven by heightened energy security concerns triggered by the West Asia war, said Leslie Maasdorp, chief executive officer (CEO) of British International Investment.
BII would explore partnerships with large domestic investors such as insurance and pension funds to jointly finance projects in energy transition, climate and infrastructure in India, he said in an interview, describing the country as the development finance institution’s (DFI) most important investment destination.
BII was a key initial investor in India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund’s (NIIF) green energy firm Ayana, which was later acquired by state-run and NTPC in a $2.3 billion deal. With a $2.5 billion India portfolio, Maasdorp said BII would seek to maintain India’s share at around 25% of its overall investments, underscoring the country’s position as the development finance institution’s most strategically important market.
“From a financial perspective, when you invest in this market, there’s ample opportunity for secondary sales to take businesses to the (initial public offering) market, to the public markets, so all the ingredients [to] have a more well functioning financial and capital markets we have in in India,” Maasdorp said. “Because of the sheer size of the market, investors want to be here because you got hundreds of millions of consumers here, and it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It’s a very sophisticated market. If you look at through an emerging market lens. It is the biggest and most consequential sort of industrial transition that is taking place here from fossil fuels. There’s going to be a multi-decade transition.”
Own capital
Regarding its recently-announced plan to invest 15 billion pounds (about $20 billion) in climate and related projects over the next five years, Maasdorp said BII would commit around 8 billion pounds from its own capital, with the remainder to be mobilised from other investors and funds, including pension and insurance funds in India.
“India has got huge savings pools in the form of pension funds, insurance capital, even funds like (National Investment and Infrastructure Fund). We want to see those companies as strategic partners because in the long term, a lot of these institutions also want to move away from their very conservative investment and strategic asset allocation models where they invest a lot in government securities, fixed incomes securities. We want to make it possible for them to invest in productive infrastructure. In energy, in climate, because that is good for the Indian economy into the into the medium time,” Maasdorp said.
Noting that investments in energy transition have gained more prominence in the wake of the ongoing Iran war, Maasdorp said: “Because most of our investments are actually in climate and infrastructure, so renewable energy is a major sector for us, stimulating the growth of electric vehicles and the entire industry ecosystem around that because you can’t just manufacture electric vehicles, you need the batteries, you need battery swapping, you need infrastructure that are charging, and so on…We see this economy as having probably the biggest potential amongst emerging markets as a fast-growing consumer market with, you know, significant potential into the medium term.”
North Star
On 19 May, BII and Danish global fund manager Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) announced the launch of North Star, a $300 million renewable energy platform in India to support the country’s clean energy transition. BII and CIP will each commit up to $150 million, with the platform designed to address the funding gap required to build and scale renewable projects in India and crowd in additional private capital.
North Star will invest across solar, wind and hybrid renewable energy as well as storage projects, which are expected to generate more than 4 million MWh of clean energy annually and avoid about 4 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year.
In 2018, BII invested $100 million to launch Ayana, a renewable generation platform. The company attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of private capital before being sold last year for an enterprise value of $2.3 billion. In 2025, BII announced $100 million investment in Nasdaq-listed ‘s solar equipment manufacturing arm to set up cell manufacturing capacity in India.
The rise in global investor interest comes in the backdrop of the government’s target of 500 GW non-fossil capacity by 2030 and plan to localize the renewable equipment ecosystem in the country.
According to a report by Colliers, released on 20 May, solar and wind energy projects in India can attract $110-120 billion of investment by 2030, with about 10-12% of likely investments in land aggregation and acquisition.