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“Solar irrigation will worsen the groundwater crisis.” This concern is raised in most discussions about the rapid spread of solar irrigation in India — where heavily subsidised or free electricity has led to unsustainable groundwater abstraction, contributing to falling water tables, depleting aquifers, and growing fiscal burdens on energy utilities.
Thus, with solar irrigation offering almost free power and no incentive to limit pumping, farmers may draw ever more groundwater.
However, there are three gaps in this framing that one should consider. First, the current debate often treats solar irrigation as a single model – typically a farmer operating a standalone solar pump with no incentive to conserve water.
In reality, solar irrigation models come in different shapes and sizes differentiated by design, ownership structure, and pricing incentives, all of which influence groundwater-related outcomes.
Dependence on model
For example, grid-connected solar models that allow farmers to sell surplus solar electricity back to the grid provides incentives for efficient water use. Evidence from Gujarat’s Suryashakti Kisan Yojana (SKY) scheme, where approximately 100 agricultural feeders were solarised, shows that solar farmers had significantly slower growth in energy consumption and irrigation application than non-solar farmers, indicating more sustainable water use.
The SKY scheme offered around Rs 7 per unit of energy as a feed-in-tariff, creating a meaningful incentive to conserve electricity and export energy. And by exporting energy, farmers earned an average of roughly Rs 21,900 annually, effectively transforming them from energy consumers to energy producers.
Similarly, in Bangladesh, in the most common solar model — called the fee-for-service centralised solar model — pump owners have earned revenue by supplying water to multiple farmers within a fixed command area. This model showed that farmers who used solar irrigation did not apply more water than farmers who used diesel for irrigation even though solar irrigation was 20-30% cheaper. This is because excessive irrigation by one farmer reduced the operator’s ability to serve others, making the efficient and equitable use of groundwater for irrigation imperative for businesses looking to become financially sustainable.
So the real question is not whether solar irrigation is inherently good or bad for groundwater but what kind of solar irrigation model is deployed, where, and with what incentives.
Even for standalone off-grid pumps under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM), there is evidence that solar pump utilisation — and the extent to which it replaces diesel versus grid electricity use — varies widely with installed capacity, the water table’s depth, and years of operating experience.
Diverse outcomes
Second, the current debate treats energy as the only factor determining groundwater outcomes, discounting the impact of local hydrogeology and agriculture. Evidence shows solar irrigation impact on farmers’ irrigation behaviour is shaped by local hydrogeology, cropping patterns, marginal returns to irrigation, and soil type, among other factors.
In regions with hard-rock aquifers with limited water storage capacity, and rainfed cropping, where each additional unit of irrigation water yields high marginal benefits, water use changed little between solar and non-solar uses (regardless of the energy source in the latter case). This diversity in outcomes must be central to policy design.
In regions such as Punjab and Haryana, where irrigation is already widespread and dominated by water-intensive crops like rice and wheat, there is little scope to expand irrigated area, making it unlikely that solar irrigation will drive further groundwater over-exploitation. The key question in such regions is not whether solar threatens groundwater, but whether it can make water, energy, and food systems more sustainable. Replacing subsidised fossil-fuel electricity with grid-connected solar can reduce subsidy costs, lower emissions, and encourage more efficient water and energy use.
On the other hand, Eastern India presents a different picture where irrigation expansion has been constrained more by access to energy than to water. Large areas remain rainfed, with farmers facing high diesel costs and unreliable power for irrigation. In such regions, solar irrigation can meaningfully improve agricultural productivity and climate resilience.
This shows solar irrigation policy, as it relates to groundwater, should follow a differentiated regional approach, reflected in context-specific deployment of solar irrigation models, paired with stronger groundwater monitoring and adaptive management to catch emerging stress early.
Emissions, subsidy burdens
A third limitation is when solar irrigation is evaluated in a silo, either as a water or energy intervention, when its consequences span water, energy, and food. For example, groundwater irrigation in India is estimated to generate between 45-62 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Agricultural electricity subsidies across States amount to over ₹1 lakh crore a year. Solar irrigation can reduce both emissions and subsidy burdens.
Estimates from Gujarat suggest each grid-connected solar farmer offsets approximately 12.3 tonnes of CO2 annually through on-farm solar use and electricity exported to the grid while subsidies covered nearly one-fourth of government investments within the first two years. Scaled across India’s more than 25 million agricultural pumps, the mitigation and fiscal implications are substantial.
Thus, the question we should be asking is not whether solar irrigation will worsen groundwater risks but how best solar irrigation can be deployed to maximise its benefits.
Expanding access
Over the past five years, India’s agricultural solar program, PM-KUSUM, has installed over 2.5 million solar pumps, making them affordable for smallholder farmers through subsidies. As the government prepares PM-KUSUM 2.0, the challenge is to advance the clean energy transition without worsening the country’s already over-exploited groundwater.
In water-stressed regions, grid-connected solar can be expanded either through individual pumps or by solarising entire agricultural feeders. Ideally, both models should reward farmers for saving water while helping energy distribution companies (DISCOMs) transition to clean energy.
However, the current approach of paying farmers to save water by selling surplus electricity to the grid has seen limited uptake. Feeder-level solarisation has performed better, but in its current form does little to change pumping behaviour. Both models therefore need to be refined.
The individual pump model requires simpler grid connection procedures and attractive buyback prices that reflect the local value of water and crops. DISCOMs should also be incentivised to support it. Feeder-level solarisation, meanwhile, should be paired with water-saving incentives to reduce both water and energy use, not just benefit DISCOMs. These could include support for micro-irrigation and direct cash payments for reduced pumping, similar to Punjab’s ‘Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao’ and Haryana’s ‘Mera Pani Meri Virasat’ schemes.
That said, where farmers still lack reliable irrigation, the priority is expanding access rather than saving water. Standalone solar pumps should therefore remain the preferred option in areas with limited irrigation, poor grid access, and low groundwater risk. Rather than focusing on individual ownership, greater emphasis should be placed on scaling them through water-user associations, water-selling entrepreneurs, and farmer cooperatives in India’s most irrigation-deprived regions.
Mohammad Faiz Alam is senior regional researcher at International Water Management Institute and Alok Sikka is an emeritus scientist and former country representative – India and Bangladesh at International Water Management Institute.
