Fossil Fuel Phase Out, Version 2.0
Prime Minister Modi could inject new life into the global climate fight by re-upping India’s COP27 proposal.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi regards himself as a bold, even radical, decision maker.
I found this out when arrived in New Delhi as The Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief in November of 2016, at just the moment when the prime minister invalidated nearly all of India’s circulating currency. More such decisions followed, all of them controversial, from subverting the status of Kashmir to amending the country’s immigration laws. Four years later I left on the eve of Modi slamming on the tightest nationwide Covid lockdown the world had seen to that point.
My six months traveling the country by rail last year, investigating the impacts of climate change and reporting on India’s efforts to transition towards a greener energy system, convinces me that Modi should make another bold move. This one would be more beneficial for India, cast Modi into the global leadership role he’s long yearned for, and inject new life into the global climate fight.
Modi should use India’s presidency of the G-20 countries this year — a year when the global climate summit COP28 will also be held in the petrostate of the United Arab Emirates — to call for the phase out of all fossil fuels, beginning with India’s use of coal.
Bold though this would be, it wouldn’t actually be the first time India has made such a proposal. At COP27 last year, India floated exactly that proposition. Then, it was almost certainly a tactic for deflecting criticism India received at the previous summit, COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. The COP26 summit came to a close with India a target of scorn for forcing the dilution of strong language calling for the end of coal use. India — backed by the world’s biggest coal user, China, and with the tacit approval of the U.S. — would only go as far as calling for an eventual phase out of coal.
That set the stage for its COP27 maneuver in Sharm El-Sheikh calling for a phase out not simply for coal, but for all fossil fuels.
India was surprised when the European Union grabbed the idea and ran with it. The E.U. proposed a deal that would support more climate funding for poor countries — specifically a fund aimed at paying developing countries compensation for climate damage historically caused by rich countries — in return for them backing the fossil fuel phase out. Indian officials were likely relieved when petrostates Russia and Saudi Arabia shot down the gambit — again, with the tacit consent of the U.S. — and the E.U. went along with a developing world climate financing mechanism anyway.
But between then and now, a lot has happened. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underscored the urgent importance of energy security — including the easy availability of fossil fuels, especially domestically plentiful ones, like coal for India.
So why should Modi back the idea again?
For one thing, he wouldn’t be alone. The E.U. plans to re-up the proposal at COP28. But a carefully considered, clarion call from Modi now for the world to phase out fossil fuels would be something altogether different than before. In the current international context, it could produce a huge boon to India while injecting desperately needed momentum into the global climate fight. India could use a fossil fuel phase-out proposal to leverage a massive flow of Western financing into cutting its own large and rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions. This north-south global cooperation would underscore the responsibility of the developed world to help the developing world massively ramp up not only access to energy but especially clean energy. Indeed, it could save the Paris Agreement, whose spirit of ever-escalating ambition is in grave danger of meeting its limits at this year’s climate summit.
This Substack chronicle has explored a country deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels even as it races to boost domestic renewable energy production to meet the expanding energy needs of a population soon to become the world’s largest. Even as India used about 10% more coal last year, more than 90% of the new power generation capacity came from wind and solar, according to Ember. India added 13.9 gigawatts of solar in 2022, equal to the U.K.’s total accumulated solar fleet at the start of the year.
In the state of Gujarat we’ve visited the world’s largest oil refinery, these days awash in deeply discounted Russian imports that India is turning into fuel and petrochemical products for itself and export in an attempt to stay ahead of gyrating global energy prices. In the nearby Rajasthan desert we’ve walked among solar panels stretching out as far as the eye could see and toured a pilot project producing the sort of green hydrogen that is expected to become a mainstay of the clean energy economy in the future. I’ve visited coal mining districts, like Talcher (post still to come!) in the eastern state of Odisha, where the roads and rails were crowded with transport freight beds overflowing with coal nuggets on their way to electricity generation and steel mining operations across the country. India still relies on coal to produce almost three-quarters of its power, and it is the country’s only domestically abundant fuel source.
We’ve also visited rural regions that have recently received electricity for the first time. They highlighted the improvements in health and education and hopes for the future that even sporadic access to power can bring — and why the Indian government is so determined to place such development at the top of its priorities, even if that means maintaining or even expanding the use of coal for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the government has so far shunned international offers of grants and below-market financing to fund renewable energy projects in return for efforts to wind down coal use.
But we’ve also found a nation already being ravaged by the effects of climate change. In short, we’ve encountered an India that encapsulates the excruciating dilemma that much of the developing world is enmeshed: desperate for development but dependent on fossil fuels.
Modi doesn’t want to compromise what he views as energy security. But India, and the world, would be better off with a different approach.
First and foremost, clinging to coal won’t assure Indians of a secure future, economically or in any other way. In fact, India’s coal use — alongside the fossil fuel consumption of the rest of the world, of course — is contributing in ever greater amounts annually to climate change. The impacts are especially troubling for India, one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.
My reporting in India last year coincided with one of the worst spring heat waves India has ever experienced. The scorching temperatures slashed the nation’s wheat crop from a prospective export bonanza to barely enough to meet domestic needs. Recently authorities warned that this year’s heat could arrive earlier and be even worse. February was the hottest since 1901. I visited coastal communities on the Bay of Bengal already collapsing from repeated cyclones and rising sea levels, renowned tea plantations in Darjeeling straining to deal with landslides caused by intense “rain bombs” caused by rising air temperatures.
Second, Indian leaders know that renewable energy is the country’s future and coal use will decline when cheaper solar and wind options proliferate faster than energy consumption grows. This turning point has yet to be reached, but it would come faster with the influx of international concessional financing for renewable energy investment spurred by a commitment to wind down coal. This would encourage other coal users — perhaps the biggest of them all, China — to move faster, as well. And it would pressure other fossil fuel consumers — the United States, Europe, Japan — to follow through on net zero commitments they’ve now, finally, gotten serious about pursuing with recent climate legislation.
There’s never been a more opportune moment for India to take up the banner of a fossil fuel phase out in earnest. Rich countries have, at least indirectly, acknowledged they owe the developing world some recompense for causing global warming. Not only is a push on to at least meet a long-promised down payment of $100 billion annually in direct climate aid, an overhaul of the World Baånk and other multilateral lending institutions is in the offing with the aim of dramatically boosting climate funding for the developing world.
India could play a dramatic role in building momentum for a new, cooperative north-south effort to address climate change. It only needs to step up with a bold move, one commensurate to the goal of the Paris Accords themselves.