India’s top 1,000 listed companies have been engaged in BRSR reporting with their annual reports since FY 2022-23, and for a long time it has been treated like a disclosure exercise. Data came in from plants and finance teams, got compiled into SEBI’s format, and went out with the annual report. FY 2026-27 changes that. BRSR Core, the verified subset of the report, now applies to all 1,000 companies, so its key figures must be checked by an independent assessor or assurance provider before they are published.
Energy is one of the areas under that check; it also takes into consideration how much of your power comes from renewable sources; it is not limited to Solar. It asks for units, sources and BRSR reporting periods, and the person verifying them will want the meter readings, bills and logs behind each one. A renewable energy figure you can’t trace back to that paper trail is a liability and can be connected to the non- renewable consumption.
SEBI introduced the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report in 2021, and it has been mandatory for the top 1,000 listed companies since financial year 2022-23. The full format is long. It follows the nine principles of the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC) and mixes narrative answers with data.
What BRSR Core Actually Is
BRSR Core is the part that gets verified. SEBI introduced it in July 2023 as a subset of nine ESG attributes, each with measurable KPIs. Energy footprint is one of these attributes. The rest cover greenhouse gas emissions, water, waste, employee wellbeing and safety, gender diversity, inclusive development, fairness toward customers and suppliers, and how openly the business operates; the various different KPIs on the basis of which these attributes are measured target overall sustainability.
Anyone getting to grips with BRSR sustainability reporting should hold onto that split. The full report is broad. The Core is what gets checked.
Who Has to Comply, and From When
SEBI phased the Core in by market capitalisation. The top 150 companies started in FY 2023-24, the top 250 followed in FY 2024-25, the top 500 in FY 2025-26, and the top 1,000 come in for FY 2026-27. Confirm which cohort you fall into rather than assuming.
One detail has the capacity to hamper the whole report. The 2023 framework asked for reasonable assurance to make businesses responsible for both their consumption and emissions. SEBI’s circular of 28 March 2025 changed the wording to “assessment or assurance,” giving companies a choice. Your pick decides how many details the verification report would cover, so settle it with your auditor early instead of in the last quarter.
Value chain disclosures are now voluntary for the top 250 companies from FY 2025-26. That doesn’t make them irrelevant; rather, there is a need to maintain the data in order to get detailed information. Suppliers and customers of listed companies, including unlisted ones, are already receiving BRSR-style data requests. Treat the voluntary window as a head start on supplier data collection.
What BRSR Renewable Energy Reporting Covers
Under the energy footprint attribute, three things are reported: total energy consumed, the share of that energy from renewable sources, and energy intensity. The full BRSR goes further under Principle 6, splitting total energy into electricity, fuel and other sources, each divided between renewable and non-renewable, which is an effective segregation.
Notice that the renewable figure is a share; at least as of now it has not become the main source of consumption, so it depends on both halves of the fraction. A plant that installs solar but can not separate solar units from grid units has a number it can’t defend. A plant that undercounts its total consumption inflates the percentage without meaning to. Assessors look for exactly this kind of mismatch.
Energy intensity ties consumption to turnover. A company can grow revenue, add solar and still see the ratio improve, which is why the denominator deserves as much attention as the renewable units.
ESG renewable energy reporting also doesn’t stop at the energy table. Solar generation lowers purchased electricity, which lowers Scope 2 emissions, which sit under the greenhouse gas attribute. The two sets of figures have to reconcile. If the energy section shows a jump in renewable units and the emissions section barely moves, expect questions.
How To Build The Evidence Trail
Most explainers stop at “report your renewable share.” The harder part is proving it.
For on-site solar, assessors usually ask to see generation meter readings, inverter or monitoring logs, DISCOM bills and, where net metering applies, the utility’s settlement statements. For off-site or open access supply, the power purchase agreement and energy accounts do the same job. Pull these records every month. Rebuilding twelve months of generation data in March is how errors creep in.
A few habits save a lot of pain later. Report units generated, not installed capacity, because a 1 MW plant tells you nothing until you know what it produced. Keep your records aligned to the April to March financial year, since logs kept on calendar months create reconciliation headaches. Record any renewable energy certificates separately from your own generation, and agree with your assurance provider how exported units under net metering should be treated before the report is drafted.
Choosing a Solar Partner With Reporting in Mind
If solar is part of your plan to raise the renewable share, the choice of a solar panel installation company in India matters beyond the installation itself. Metering design, monitoring and O&M reporting decide whether you’ll have clean data a year from now. Ask how generation is logged, how often reports are produced, and whether the data can be exported in a form your sustainability team can actually use.
Jevanta Renewables has commissioned over 950 MW across rooftop, ground-mounted and utility-scale projects, backed by 25+ years of combined expertise. Its O&M services include monitoring and performance optimisation, which is where BRSR renewable energy reporting-grade data begins. Its CAPEX, RESCO and BOOT models also change who owns the plant, and with it the paperwork that sits on your side. Settle that at the contract stage, not during assurance. Our CAPEX vs RESCO comparison covers the financial side of that choice.
What to Do Before the Next Reporting Cycle
Start with data you already have: last year’s electricity bills, fuel purchase records, any solar generation logs. Map them to the Core energy KPIs and see where the gaps are. Give one person ownership of the energy data so the numbers don’t sit in four different spreadsheets. Then decide with your auditor between assessment and assurance. If new renewable capacity is on the roadmap, plan its metering and monitoring before commissioning, not after. Compare the figures with last year’s filing too. A renewable share that swings sharply without a matching project or purchase behind it will draw questions from assessors and investors alike. Small gaps are easier to fix in June than in March.
BRSR reporting rewards companies that treat energy data as an operational record rather than a year-end exercise. The renewable share you report for FY 2026-27 will only be as credible as the meters behind it. If you’re weighing a solar project to improve that number, the Jevanta Renewables team can help you work out system design, financing models and what to log from day one.
