India’s Climate Dilemma Will Hang Over Modi’s Next Five Years

  • Green industrialization, clean energy will be in focus
  • Surging power demand will complicate energy transition efforts

Women walk across a street engulfed by dense smog in Chennai.

Photographer: R. Satish Babu/AFP/Getty Images

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, heading into his third term with a weakened mandate, wants India to embrace a new “green era” at the forefront of climate diplomacy and clean technology.

To succeed, he’ll need to balance those ambitions against a need to sustain growth and satisfy rapidly accelerating electricity demand, leaning on a fraying power system still heavily dependent on coal.