Climate & Just Transition – Adding record solar power while coal still runs most of the grid.
- >50% of installed capacity (non-fossil; target met 5 years early)
- 74% of electricity generated (still from coal, 2025)
- 22% of energy consumption (is electricity at all)
- 80 GW of new coal approved (to be added by 2032)
India hit its clean energy target five years early: more than half of installed capacity is non-fossil. In the same year, coal generated nearly three-quarters of the electricity that actually flowed.
Installed capacity is not generation. Solar and wind produce when the sun shines; coal runs around the clock. That is why fifty percent built clean and twenty-six percent generated clean sit side by side, and why storage is the binding constraint.
Abroad, India is the most consistent voice for equity in climate talks. At home, just-transition planning for coal districts remains thin, and the nearer exposure is adaptation: heat, erratic monsoons, water stress.
The signal to watch: Coal’s share of generation, not of capacity. It has barely moved.
Where we would take your group
- A solar park and a coal town. Both within a day’s drive of each other.
- A grid control room. What happens at seven when the solar drops off.
- A district heat action plan. Adaptation as it is actually administered.
Questions for the debrief
- India argues for a globally funded just transition abroad while its own coal-region planning stays underdeveloped. Is that hypocrisy, sequencing, or negotiation?
- The newer domestic critique says just transition must also protect communities displaced by solar parks and transmission corridors. Does that widen the concept usefully or dilute it?
- India’s carbon market uses emissions-intensity targets, not an absolute cap. Model what that permits over a decade of 6% growth.
