Book
Handbook on the Geopolitics of the Energy Transition
Shuva Raha, Nandini Harihar, and Tulika Gupta
August 2023 | International Cooperation
Overview
India is set to be the world’s first major economy to industrialize on a low-carbon pathway, with 2070 as its net-zero year. India’s energy choices to fuel its economic expansion will have immense implications for the 1.4 billion citizens of the world’s largest democracy - and consequently, the world itself.Over the decades, India has evolved a three-pronged energy strategy: it is now focused on achieving energy security rather than independence; promoting indigenization of core energy technologies instead of relying on protectionism; and leveraging energy leapfrogs instead of linear transitions to achieve clean energy-powered economic transformation. This chapter tracks India’s journey of ensuring energy access, security, justice, and sustainability for a fifth of humanity; unpacks its decarbonization efforts; and explores the impact and influence of its policies and actions on the global trade and governance of a range of commodities, equipment, technologies, and finance.
Key Findings
- India faces the unprecedented historical challenge of simultaneously executing four distinct energy imperatives for a fifth of humanity: expanding access, ensuring national security, maintaining social justice, and achieving environmental sustainability.
- The country’s energy transition is uniquely shaped by a domestic paradox, where it must aggressively phase down carbon emissions while rapidly expanding total generation capacity to power structural economic growth and poverty alleviation.
- Energy justice forms the core of India's transition strategy, requiring that the financial burdens of building a green grid do not disproportionately fall on low-income populations through unaffordable electricity tariffs.
- Achieving national energy security involves mitigating heavy geopolitical risks by rapidly scaling domestic solar and wind infrastructure to reduce vulnerability to volatile global oil and gas supply chains.
- India utilizes aggressive state-driven market creation policies—such as competitive bidding and large-scale public procurement—to artificially drive down the costs of clean energy technologies, setting a blueprint for the Global South.
- The domestic transition relies heavily on a dual-track strategy that rapidly scales up renewable capacity while deploying near-term "readiness levers" like bio-fuels and green hydrogen to handle harder-to-abate heavy industries.
- Resolving legacy structural issues, such as the financial distress of state-owned power distribution companies and grid integration hurdles, remains the primary roadblock to sustaining long-term green infrastructure investments.
- India frames its energy story internationally not just as a domestic effort, but as a global model demonstrating that emerging economies can successfully decouple human development from carbon-intensive growth.
Navigating a decarbonisation path for a fifth of humanity requires a delicate balancing act, where high-level climate commitments cannot outpace the foundational imperatives of universal energy access and absolute poverty eradication.
