India's Energy and Emissions Future: A Synthesis of Recent Scenarios

Renewable energy, sustainability paradox and the post-urban question

“…https://www.ey.com/gl/en/industries/power---utilities/renewable-energy-country-attractiveness-index 3 Not all agree with this kind of hue and cry. Dubash et al (2018) take up the issue of whether India can be considered an emissions villain or hero. They examine a range of projected 2030 emissions (based on 2015 policies) to draw a more sympathetic conclusion that a doubling of India's energy-based CO2 emissions from 2012 levels can reasonably be considered an upper bound for 2030 emissions, reinforced by recent trends toward lower than expected electricity demand, a faster than expected transition from coal to renewables and a per capita emissions in 2030 that will remain well below today's global average.…”

India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy Engagement

“…Interpreting future Indian energy trends and their associated GHG emissions is thereby difficult. A synthesis of recent modeling studies finds that India's 2030 CO 2 projections range from a 9% to a 169% increase from 2012 levels (85). In addition to varying projections of energy use and emissions, the swiftly changing domestic context makes climate mitigation costs difficult to estimate (69, 78).…”

“…In its Paris NDC pledge, India packaged these into a larger statement that by 2030, 40% of India's electricity generation capacity would be based on fossil-fuel-free sources (37), which, as analysts have noted, are likely to be well exceeded if the 2022 pledges are met (87). The marketplace responded with dramatically dropping renewable energy generation prices for wind and solar, with the cost of solar electricity plummeting from 17.91 INR/KWh (0.356 USD/kWh in 2010) to 2.44 INR/KWh (0.038 USD/kWh) in 2017 (88,89). Renewable energy capacity addition in 2016-2017 almost matched that year's addition from thermal power (89), stemming from well-structured reverse auctions (90,91).…”

“…In sum, India's energy future is significant for global climate mitigation, but India's development transitions make it analytically difficult to have clarity on its likely energy, and consequently emissions, trajectory. Projections vary from India's growth path being fueled by large amounts of carbon-intensive coal (64, 84, 102), or alternatively, India making large strides in renewable energy toward a lower-carbon future than business-as-usual (BAU) (103); however, in all cases the per capita carbon projections for India remain well below global averages (85). As the literature increasingly suggests, it is likely that the eventual destination of India's energy sector will be determined by development choices that the country makes, which will have implications for future electricity demand and the pace of the transition from coal to renewables.…”

Energy in South Asian history

“…By the end of the 20th century, however, most postcolonial nations experienced the unprecedented expansion of global fossil fuels not as a sudden revolution, but as a gradual and on-going energy transition (Miller & Warde, 2019). Highly populous nations across the global south continue to struggle to provision their citizens with adequate access to reliable commercial energy, even as countries like China and India are now poised to lead the world in future fossil fuel growth (Dubash, Khosla, Rao, & Bhardwaj, 2017;Guruswamy, 2011;Smil, 2000). 2 The main drivers of the postwar fossil fuel expansion were the high-consumption societies of Europe and North America, reflecting the profound inequality in the global distribution of carbon consumption between western nations and the majority of the world's population (Pirani, 2018).…”