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The Supreme Court’s December 19 judgment on protecting the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB), which is rapidly declining, will directly reshape India’s Green Energy Corridor (GEC) projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat, locking large volumes of renewable capacity into narrowly defined transmission routes and heightening the risk of stranded assets in the country’s desert heartlands.
The ruling closes a four-year legal battle that repeatedly disrupted GEC planning and execution. In April 2021, the court ordered all overhead power lines across nearly 99,000 square kilometres of GIB habitat to be placed underground within a year. The direction effectively stalled approvals under GEC Phase I, delayed commissioning of evacuation lines, and cast uncertainty over Phase II projects, which were designed to carry large volumes of new solar and wind power from desert districts to interstate and national grids.
The Union government told the court that the blanket undergrounding mandate threatened to block evacuation from vast renewable-rich areas, warning that delays could strand approved projects and force greater reliance on coal-based generation. Industry submissions highlighted that over 9 gigawatt (GW) of solar capacity was awaiting transmission approvals, much of it linked to GEC-aligned substations and pooling stations in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
In March 2024, the court partially modified its earlier order, citing technical infeasibility, grid safety concerns and climate costs, and appointed an expert committee to recommend a more calibrated approach. The December verdict now gives legal finality to that framework—one that preserves core GEC infrastructure but redraws its permissible geography.
A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and A S Chandurkar reiterated that GIB protection was “non-negotiable” as it finalised revised priority conservation areas—14,013 square kilometres in Rajasthan and 740 square kilometres in Gujarat. Within these zones, no new wind turbines, no solar parks above 2 megawatt (MW), and no expansion of existing renewable projects will be allowed, effectively capping future generation that GEC Phase II was intended to evacuate.
The implications for transmission are immediate. In Rajasthan, 80 km of identified 33 kilovolt (kV) lines must be undergrounded immediately, while remaining lines in priority areas must be rerouted or insulated within two years. Nine 66 kV and higher-voltage lines—many aligned with planned GEC strengthening—must be shifted away from bustard habitats. Crucially, all future evacuation through the region will be funnelled into a single dedicated power corridor up to 5 km wide south of the Desert National Park.
For Green Energy Corridor planners, this corridor-based approach compresses evacuation into narrow bands, increasing congestion risk and limiting redundancy—key design principles of GEC Phase II, which envisaged multiple high-capacity routes to absorb future renewable additions. Projects already connected under Phase I gain relative security, while Phase II lines outside approved corridors face redesign, rerouting or delays.
In Gujarat, where GEC infrastructure is critical to evacuating wind power from Kutch and coastal solar projects, the court-approved corridors linked to Bhachunda and coastal substations will similarly constrain routing. Several 33 kV, 66 kV and higher-voltage GEC-linked lines in revised priority areas must be undergrounded or shifted, with compliance timelines stretching to 2028, prolonging uncertainty for Phase II expansion.
Significantly, the court rejected universal undergrounding and mandatory bird diverters, preventing a complete derailment of GEC execution. Exemptions for 11 kV and below distribution lines near settlements provide limited relief for decentralised solar but do little to ease high-capacity corridor constraints.
While the revised judgment avoids freezing the Green Energy Corridor altogether, it hardwires ecological limits into its future. Large parts of Rajasthan’s and Gujarat’s desert renewable potential—earmarked for evacuation under Phase II—may now remain permanently outside the grid’s legal reach.
The verdict signals a decisive shift: India’s flagship transmission backbone for renewables must now be planned not just around resource availability and demand centres, but around immutable conservation boundaries. For developers and utilities, regulatory certainty has arrived—but so has the reality that under the Green Energy Corridor, clean energy in the desert states risks being stranded not by lack of generation, but by where the grid is allowed to run.