India, Dec. 21 -- 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...