India’s Clean Energy Conundrum

President Trump’s threat to double tariffs on Indian goods, to 50%, as punishment for the country’s continued purchase of Russian oil, puts India in an untenable position. The US is its top export market, but India is deeply reliant on importing energy to support the needs of its 1.4 billion people.

As the world's most populous nation and one of its fastest-growing economies, India faces unprecedented energy demands and also pressure to meet that demand with clean energy. Today, around 70 percent of the country’s electricity comes from coal — a major contributor to air pollution in India’s large cities.

So how can India meet its fast-growing energy needs while also ensuring energy affordability, equity, and public health? Where is India in making progress toward deploying clean energy? What role might conventional energy continue to play? And how does India’s relationship with China factor into its decarbonization efforts?

This week, Jason talks to Sunita Narain about the state of India’s clean energy transition.

Sunita is executive director of the Centre for Science and Environment, a research and advocacy center where she has worked since 1982. In 2016, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.