German engineering giant Siemens is looking to throw some money at solar and wind power in India now. It is going to invest $346 million in India’s renewable energy sector over the next three years.

Peter Loscher, Siemens’ chief executive, said the firm will increase its Indian workforce by about 50 per cent to 25,000 people and about a third of the investment will be for development of wind turbine technology. It is putting some into solar technology development there as well.

India is a major growth market, in general, and renewable energy is no exception.

Siemens “plans to put a turbine manufacturing plant near Tamil Nadu and Gujarat on India’s west coast, where it expects new wind farm developments to be built,” according to Tom Young of BusinessGreen.

Initially, the focus is on producing wind turbines for India’s domestic market, but it could expand into exports at a later date, according to Loscher.

This has happened before. “Suzlon Energy, which commenced operations in south India in 1995 with just 20 people, now has a manufacturing capacity of 4200MW a year and about 10 per cent of the global wind turbine market.”

The Indian government is thinking about adopting official renewable energy targets, which could lead to some extra help for Siemens and others interested in developing renewable energy technology there. Just recently, the government announced subsidies for utilities using solar power totaling $5 billion over the next 20 years.

Siemens seems confident in the actions India is taking to encourage clean, renewable energy.