INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of RENEWABLE ENERGY RESEARCH D. Kolisetty and B. B. Jose, Vol.8, No.2, June, 2018 Indian Progress in the Renewable Technologies: A Review on Present Status, Policies, and Barriers Deepthi Kolisetty a D. R. Binu Ben Jose b School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Chennai a deepthieee@gmail.com, b binuben.jose@vit.ac.in Received: 14.12.2017 Accepted: 14.02.2018 Abstract The world’s energy demand is growing and conventional sources are diminishing. Sustainable/renewable energy sources are gaining possibilities to come up with solutions to the long standing energy crisis, environmental problems, economic development and quality of life. By adopting renewable technologies in developing countries like India, effective steps are being taken towards clean mechanism and fortifying more sustainable future. From the past three decades there has been a strenuous pursuit to development, demonstration, application, production and research of renewable/sustainable technologies for use in distinct sectors. These efforts led to substantial improvement in renewable power generation. However, energy demand also increases largely in higher proportion to the production. It is observed that the current energy requirement is more than 1162 million units (MU) and the availability is 1138 MU leaving a shortage of 24 MU approximately. Hence, this paper focuses on discovering further availability of barren space for power generation from the renewable sources such as solar, wind, bio-energy and small hydro. The available unused potential of various energy sources in different states of India have been identified. The current status in market, policies, and various constraints of renewable technologies in India has also been summarized. Key words Renewable Energy, Market status, Policies, Barriers, Solutions 1. Introduction Energy sources have been classified into a. Fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas, b. renewable energy resources and c. nuclear resources. According to Energy Information Administration of US report 2016, the present world energy consumption has been calculated as 550.4 exajoules [1]. Fig.1 shows the year wise distribution of various fuels. The contribution of fossil fuels has been estimated as 78.4%. As per World Energy Forum prediction, the reserves of fossil fuels will be exhausted in less than another 10 decades. Energy demand increases by population growth. Energy sources play a vital role in fulfilling the need of population in the world. Electricity places an important role for economic growth, industrialization, urbanization and quality of life. Energy demand is proportional to economic growth. Fossil fuels are slender in quantity and their vast usage is associated with environmental retrogression. There are three major environmental issues; global warming, ozone layer depletion and acid rain [3]. The result has been an express growth in the amount of greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere and a rise in fuel cost which are the main causes to look into the alternative sources. Fig. 1. World Energy consumption by fuel [2]. 0,00 50,00 100,00 150,00 200,00 250,00 Liquid fuels Coal Natural gas Renewables Year World energy consumption