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This week, following a sweeping victory in national balloting that took nearly six weeks to complete, Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s new prime minister.

For the first time in 30 years, an Indian leader has an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament, which means he does not need coalition partners to push through legislation.

Power distributors and power brokers in Hawaii should keep an eye on how the new government deals with renewable energy, especially solar.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at swearing in in May 2014.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/narendramodiofficial/

Modi comes to national office after more than a decade as chief minister of Gujarat state — a region of India along the country’s northwest coastline. There he pushed for increased use of renewable energy. Currently, while Gujarat makes up less than 5 percent of India’s population, it supplies more than 16 percent of its wind power. According to government figures, wind power supplies less than 2 percent of the nation’s electricity; solar accounts for even less.

But the new prime minister is likely to make a fresh push for solar power.

He comes to office having turned Gujarat into an early test ground for solar energy. A single installation of photovoltaic panels sprawls across nearly 5,000 acres at the Charanka Solar Park — the largest solar facility in Asia.

That project has attracted international attention, as well as a $100 million loan from the Asian Development Bank.

So for both India and Hawaii, the emphasis is on renewable energy, not because it would be a “nice to have” but because it will become a “need to have.”

Like Hawaii, India has set targets for increasing its use of renewable energy.

In India’s case, that includes generating 15 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020. Hawaii’s goal of 40-percent renewable sourcing by 2020 is more ambitious, but the state has had a running start, and it is infinitely smaller than the second most populous nation on earth.

Another similarity to Hawaii is the need to bring energy in from outside. India imports 80 percent of its crude oil.

The Asian nation engages in deficit spending to pay for imported coal, which accounts for and which causes enormous pollution.

So for both India and Hawaii, the emphasis is on renewable energy, not because it would be a “nice to have” but because it will become a “need to have.”

“Off the grid” is a phrase that has a different connotation in India than it does in Hawaii. Roughly one-third of India’s 1.2 billion residents have no access to electricity. What this means from a policy standpoint is that the pursuit of renewables is not limited to utility-scale power supplies, it is about the ability to serve decentralized individual households, which is particularly critical in rural areas. This is true for rural areas of Hawaii as well.

The Modi government wants to develop India’s solar sector to the extent that every household in the country will be able to at least power a light bulb with solar energy within five years. Last week, , each home could run two light bulbs, a solar cooker, and a television within that time frame.

While that may not sound like much by the energy-sucking habits of air conditioned Americans, according to the World Bank, India’s per capita consumption of electricity is among the lowest in the world.

A World Bank report titled, ,” also notes the country “needs massive additions in capacity to meet the demand of its rapidly growing economy.”

Hawaii needs increased capacity for renewables as well. But one of the biggest reasons that Hawaii should keep an eye on India’s solar energy world comes back to the relationship between business and government.

In India, the companies that distribute power have been slow to implement certain government regulations. And while the finances of state-run companies are a challenge unique to economies such as India and China, the issues of a workable business plan for sustainable energy appear to be universal.

In Hawaii, the HECO’s Integrated Resource Plan Action Plan, writing that it “appeared to be, in part, a series of unrelated capital projects without strategic focus on the clear issues facing the utility, and did not indicate further progress towards a sustainable business model.”

Building a sustainable business model that can eventually work without the government subsidizing the entire operation and without unfairly penalizing companies or consumers is the ultimate goal for everyone.

A large piece of the puzzle for both Hawaii and India is to make room for not only the large scale power projects, but also the smaller, decentralized energy supplies — whether that is a set of rooftop solar panels on Oahu or a single-panel set-up in Rajasthan.

The biggest challenges facing the solar industry are not those of science and engineering, but of government oversight, planning and, ultimately, financing.

This is where it’s vital for Hawaii’s government and industry leaders to pay close attention to how these facets of renewable energy play out elsewhere — especially where they succeed. India’s solar future bears watching.