Op Ed: India needs to urgently decarbonize its power sector. Here’s how it can succeed
India has always been a country of dichotomies.
It is the world’s most populous nation, fifth biggest economy and home to the highest number of billionaires after China and the U.S. It is a world leader in digital finance, thanks to the creation of digital public infrastructure, and is the world’s third-largest start-up hub.
Yet it remains a lower-middle-income economy, with a large share of the population classified as low-income or poor, and is a highly unequal society.
India’s climate narrative is, similarly, marked by contradictions.
While its contribution to world cumulative emissions is negligible — India accounts for approximately 4% of the global stock of emissions in the atmosphere — and it is one of the lowest emitters on a per-capita basis, India is already the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses on an annual basis, and is, worryingly, home to 12 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities.
The NLC Tamil Nadu Power power plant, right, and Tuticorin Thermal Power Station, left, in Tuticorin, India.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
With India forecast to be the world’s fastest-growing large economy and biggest oil consumer over the coming years, if it does not take action fast, emissions will only continue to rise.
‘Greening’ of the power sector
India needs to act not only for the world to achieve the Paris Agreement ambitions, but also for its own survival.
More than 75% of Indian districts are at risk of extreme weather and it is already seeing fiercer cyclones, greater incidences of drought and flooding and more heatwaves. While these climatic changes will impact worker productivity and economic output in aggregate, they will disproportionately impact vulnerable communities and farmers — 60% of which are monsoon-dependent.
While India needs to decarbonize its entire economy, achieving its target of net-zero emissions by 2070 arguably hinges on the “greening” of its power sector.
With a 34% share, India’s power industry constitutes the single biggest source of emissions in India, and its grid ranks as the fourth most carbon-intensive in the world. Coal still accounts for almost 50% of installed power capacity, and more than 70% of power generation.
With greater power demand expected from consumers, as well as existing and emerging areas of industry, in the near future, and the ongoing electrification of the economy also putting greater pressure on the grid, emissions from power will continue to rise if left unabated.
A farmer works in his vegetable field in Jharia city, Dhanbad district, Jharkhand state.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
In recognition of the imperative to decarbonize power as a means to drive the whole-economy emissions transition, the government has outlined impressive clean energy targets: achieving a 50% share of renewables in power capacity by 2030 and energy independence by 2047.
India has made impressive strides toward these goals. As a result of significant private sector investment, India now ranks fourth of all countries globally on installed solar and wind power capacity and its addition of renewable power capacity has been particularly strong in recent years.
Unfortunately, this simply isn’t enough. To truly decarbonize its energy sector, India needs to act on three fronts.
1. Integrating renewable energy into the grid
Apart from greater renewable capacity installation — for context, India’s additions in 2024 represented only 8% of China’s — India needs to find ways to integrate greater amounts of renewable energy into its grid, a challenge that countries globally are grappling with, while continuing to invest in baseload (or round-the-clock readily available) power.
To do this, India needs to invest more in battery storage infrastructure — including via pumped hydro storage, new and innovative battery energy storage systems, and also green hydrogen.
Subscribe now
Indeed, the inability to transmit renewable energy into the grid when it is generated in surplus (for example, solar during summer months in south-western states) often leads to curtailment, or the intentional offloading of power production, as the lack of storage capacity prevents its use in power-scarce states.
Digitalization of the grid will also be key to integrating renewables. Emerging digital technologies can enable power operators to access information from renewable energy assets and consumers in real time, allowing them to operate intelligent load-dispatching systems based on current supply and demand.
In order to have a tangible impact on renewable power integration, grid digitalization will need to take place concurrently with electricity market reform.
Currently, India’s state electricity distribution companies, or DISCOMs, have limited flexibility in incorporating renewables as per availability and demand as they are locked into long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs).
Plans for what’s known as a Market-Based Economic Dispatch System, which would centralize power purchase and dispatch across the country on a real-time basis, will enable India to transition from relatively inflexible locked-in power agreements with thermal power producers to lowest-cost (including renewable) generation.
Solar panels at the Bhadla Solar Park in Bhadla, in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.
Sajjad Hussain | Afp | Getty Images
A digital energy grid overlaid with centralized power purchase and dispatch will improve efficiency in power trading, and also likely lead to lower power prices.
While this transition takes place, greater flexibility is needed at India’s coal power plants to ensure a steady baseload supply of power, while more investment in nuclear is needed to guarantee future energy security. Reassuringly, India has already outlined plans for both.
2. Improving energy efficiency
The second front constitutes a greater focus on enhancing energy efficiency, both on the demand and supply side.
On the demand side, smart appliances, buildings, and meters, coupled with time-of-day tariffs, can enable better demand optimization. On the supply side, meanwhile, the professionalization of state distribution companies via arrangements with private operators can be instrumental in reducing transmission losses.
India sees heavy losses in power transmission across most states as infrastructure remains outdated, while leakages and theft are rampant.
Indian residential and agricultural consumers have long thought of electricity as a free public good, and for good reason. India’s DISCOMs heavily subsidize power to these two segments.
Professionalization of power distribution can help lower these subsidies and reduce wastage. States that have professionalized distribution have indeed shown a significant reduction in transmission and distribution losses. In a power-hungry — power demand is expected to quadruple by 2050 — and historically power-scarce country, there is no room for waste.
3. Decentralized energy solutions
The third front constitutes the greater installation and use of decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions, including rooftop solar and microgrids.
This will enable India to meet the dual goals of both improving power access for India’s remote and marginalized communities, as well as greening its power supply.
Progress on the installation of rooftop solar has been slow so far, impeded by a lack of affordability, consumer awareness and trained personnel, with only around 16 gigawatts installed versus a target of 40 gigawatts.
Microgrids, meanwhile, remain commercially unviable, and more impact — non-commercially minded — capital will be required to get such initiatives off the ground. Hearteningly, recent government initiatives signal progress on decentralized renewable energy, and this installation will be important in lowering grid load and emissions.
Where the funding could come from
All three prongs of India’s energy sector transition will require funding. According to expert estimates, India needs to spend around $100 billion per year, or 2.8% of current nominal GDP, to achieve net-zero power sector emissions by 2070.
With various imminent and urgent competing demands on the country’s budget, public finance will simply not be enough.
India will need to attract greater amounts of philanthropic, foreign, and private capital, as well as develop creative financing structures, to meet its net-zero target.
Each of these capital sources has a specific role to play.
Residential properties stand illuminated at night on hillsides in Gangtok, Sikkim, India.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
While philanthropic capital can help in seed funding unproven new technologies ― for example, new battery technologies, nuclear, and green hydrogen ― greater foreign and domestic public capital can play a role in de-risking investments that so far generate lower-than-market returns (for example, microgrids). Finally, more private capital can help finance already commercially viable opportunities, including power distribution and renewables.
The good news is this: India’s mammoth endeavor to transition its power sector paves the way for significant growth across multiple sunrise sectors.
It opens up tremendous opportunities for investment and entrepreneurship across renewables and decentralized energy solutions, emerging technologies in battery storage, nuclear, green fuels, various segments of energy efficiency and in software/ digital capabilities.
India’s clean-tech ecosystem is already emerging, and energy-related enterprises, including those operating in renewables and energy efficiency, directly account for 70% of all green startups in the country.
As the transition ensues, more capital will be needed. With rising incidents of heatwaves crippling productivity whilst raising grid load across the country, and India simultaneously positioning itself as a global data center hub, there is no time to lose — the call for greater green and transition finance is now.
Honda’s patent filings offer a clear glimpse into the company’s plans for an ultra-affordable electric motorcycle, integrating a proven chassis with a simple electric powertrain. It’s a clear glimpse into how the world’s most prolific motorcycle maker plans to challenge the nascent electric motorcycle market.
The filings in Honda’s new patent show a bike built around the familiar platform of the Honda Shine 100, a best-selling commuter in India, reimagined in electric form for a cost-effective future of urban mobility.
According to Cycle World’s Ben Purvis, Honda’s patent sketches outline a design that repurposes the Shine’s sturdy frame and chassis mounting points to house an electric motor and compact battery setup. Positioned where the engine once sat, a mid-motor drives the rear wheel via a single-speed reduction gear and chain – mirroring the essentials of the original gasoline-powered commuter bike.
Instead of a traditional fuel tank, the design features two lithium-ion battery packs, angled forward on either side of the spine frame and fitting neatly into the existing geometry.
What makes the bike revealed in this patent even more interesting isn’t just its clever packaging, but rather the platform. By leveraging the proven Shine chassis, Honda can significantly cut development costs, manufacturing complexity, and market price. That’s a big statement given that surviving in price-sensitive markets like India demands simplicity and reliability. And by piggybacking off a proven platform, Honda can dramatically reduce the time to market from the time the boardroom bigwigs give the project the final green light.
The design still seems to feature styling that would be fairly consistent with the Shine 100, even down to a gas cap-like circular protrusion likely on top of a faux-tank. Some electric motorcycles in the past have used this location to hide a charging port, keeping similar form and function to outdated fuel tanks and fill ports, though it’s not clear if that is Honda’s intention.
It’s not clear what power level Honda could be targeting, but the Shine bike from which Honda’s creation draws its design inspiration could provide some clues. The Honda Shine 100 features a 99cc engine that provides around 7.3 horsepower (around 5.5 kW) and has a top speed of 85 km/h (53 mph), solidly planting it in the commuter segment of motorcycles.
The electric motorcycle in Honda’s design would be unlikely to target much higher performance as it would drastically increase the required battery capacity, and thus similar speeds of around 80-85 km/h (50-53 mph) would seem likely.
There also appears to be no active cooling, which would also limit the amount of power that Honda would be likely to draw continuously. The patent describes a channel formed by the two battery packs, leading to the speed controller and creating ducted cooling that pulls heat out of the batteries and electronics without drawing extra power.
This emerging design is just one piece of Honda’s broader electric two-wheeler strategy. Their entry-level EM1 e: and Activa e: scooters launched with mobile battery packs and budget-friendly pricing. Meanwhile, high-tech concepts continually push the envelope. But this Shine-based bike aims squarely at the heart of mainstream affordability – a move likely to resonate with millions of new electric riders in developing regions like India where traditionally-styled small-dsiplacement motorcycles reign supreme.
Honda hasn’t revealed a timeline or pricing yet, but Honda’s patents offer real hope to fans of the brand’s electric efforts. If scaled effectively, this could be the first truly mass-market electric motorcycle from a major OEM, with a sticker price likely far below the $5,000 mark usually seen as a floor for commuter electric motorcycles from major manufacturers. That would also dramatically undercut models from brands like Zero or Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire, even as those brands rush to bring their own lower-cost models to market.
Electrek’s Take
Honda’s patent reveals a clever, no-frills EV designed to democratize electric two-wheeling, especially in developing markets that are even more price-sensitive than Western electric motorcycle customers.
Using a trusted frame, simple electric drive, and passive cooling, I’d say it definitely prioritizes cost over complexity, which is exactly what urban commuters need. If Honda can bring this to market, it would not just add another electric bike to the mix… it could create a new baseline for affordability in affordable electric mobility. Now we’re just waiting for the rubber to hit the road!
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Tesla shareholders will vote on whether to invest into xAI, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private company, according to a post by Musk on twitter today.
Elon Musk is not just the CEO of Tesla, the electric car company that you may have heard about from time to time in Electrek’s coverage, but several other companies as well. And, famously, Musk companies often share resources – there has been much talk of incorporating SpaceX technology into Tesla vehicles, and putting xAI/twitter’s “MechaHitler”…. er, I mean, “Grok”…. feature into Tesla cars, among other collaborations that have happened over his various companies’ histories.
And today, Musk made it official that he will seek greater collaboration between three of his companies: Tesla, xAI, and twitter, in the form of an investment into xAI by Tesla.
The situation is a little more complicated than that, though.
Tesla is a public company, owned by shareholders. Musk is the largest shareholder, but only owns around 12% of the company himself.
This is a different situation than xAI, which is a private company, owned by Musk. While there are other investors, he can exercise much more direct control over the company, and doesn’t have to put big decisions up to a vote.
One of the recent decisions he made with xAI was to purchase twitter in March. You may say, “wait, I thought he bought twitter back in 2022?,” and you’d be correct. Musk purchased twitter for $44 billion in 2022, which was widely agreed to be far too high a price, and then rapidly saw the company’s valuation drop to under $10 billion.
Then, in March 2025, Musk had xAI purchase twitter in an all-stock deal, valuing twitter company at $45 billion – again, far too high of a valuation, but considering he purchased the company from himself, he could set the price at whatever he wanted.
The move was widely considered to be a bailout of twitter, and the numbers involved considered arbitrary, perhaps partially to help save face for Musk after he made one of the worst business deals of all time.
Now the two are the same entity, and it seems clear that he would like to bring Tesla into the fold, in some way or another.
Musk has already improperly used resources from Tesla, a public company, to boost xAI and twitter, his private companies. Last year, he gave up Tesla’s priority position for highly sought-after NVIDIA H100 GPUs, instead shipping those GPUs to xAI and twitter. Tesla could have used these GPUs for training its FSD/Robotaxi systems, which Musk has claimed is the most important thing to Tesla’s future, but instead graciously sent them to his other company that used them to, uh, train a bot to say Nazi stuff apparently.
xAI has also poached talent from Tesla, multiple times, showing how Musk is using Tesla as a farm team for his private company.
So it hasn’t been a secret that Musk would like to use public money to bail out his private companies, as he’s been setting the stage for for a while now.
Musk has previously “discussed” getting Tesla to invest in xAI in the past, but the idea was never made official until today, when Musk said that he will put the idea to a shareholder vote.
In response to one of his superfans asking for the the opportunity to waste money on an overvalued social media app (which would mark the third time it has been overpaid for in as many years), and the backend fueling “MechaHitler,” Musk said this:
Tesla traditionally holds its annual shareholder meeting around the middle of the year, so if it were a normal year, this shareholder vote might be imminent.
But it’s not a normal year, as just last week Tesla announced an exceptionally late shareholder meeting, pushing it back to November, the latest it has ever held the meeting.
This means that Musk will have around four months to campaign for this idea – something that he’ll perhaps have more time to do, now that he’s no longer cosplaying as a government official.
We don’t know what the structure of the deal might look like yet, but Musk has been clear in the past that he wants more shares in Tesla. After selling many of his shares in order to buy twitter, he later complained that he doesn’t feel comfortable having less than 25% of Tesla. Given that his recent xAI/twitter deal was an all-stock deal, Musk could attempt to fund any investment of Tesla into xAI via shares, giving himself more Tesla shares in exchange for the company gaining a portion of xAI. Though to get him to 25% voting shares in Tesla, that would require either an enormous valuation for xAI, a small valuation for Tesla, or purchasing a large percentage of xAI (or, perhaps, all three, given how much higher TSLA’s valuation is than xAI’s).
We may however have a hint as to how that vote will go, because the last time Musk campaigned for a clearly terrible idea, Tesla shareholders ate it up.
In mid-2024, Musk ended his yearslong absenteeism at Tesla in a flurry of activity, hoping to persuade enough shareholders to vote for his illegal $55B pay package.
That flurry involved firing 10% of the company (supposedly in order to save money – though Tesla’s earnings have dropped drastically since), including important leadership and successful teams, which caused chaos with Tesla’s projects. He also pushed back an all-important affordable car project (which we’ve still heard nothing about) and held Tesla’s AI projects hostage while shifting both resources and staff from Tesla to his private AI company, even as he claims that AI is the future of Tesla.
In the end, these bad decisions worked, and shareholders voted to give their bad CEO his $55B pay package, even though it was later ruled to still be illegal.
So it looks like we’ve got another campaign coming up, and if last time was any indication, expect some really bad decisions along the way. It worked last time, didn’t it?
Republicans recently killed a number of home energy efficiency credits, including the rooftop solar credit. That means you only have until the end of this year to upgrade your home before republicans raise the cost of doing so by an average of ~$10,000. So if you want to go solar, get started TODAY, because these things take time and the system needs to be active before you file for the credit.
To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here. – ad*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
The off-highway equipment experts at Perkins and McElroy have teamed up to develop a plug-and-play battery electric power unit designed to help equipment OEMs and upfitters to seamlessly transition from diesel to battery electric power.
Designed to occupy the same space as the companies’ diesel-engined power units, Perkins dropped its new battery power unit into the similarly new McElroy TracStar 900i pipe fusion machine (specialized equipment used to join thermoplastic pipes like HDPE or polypropylene by heat-welding them end-to-end to form a continuous length pf pipe).
Perkins’ battery electric power unit replaces the company’s proprietary 134 hp, 3.6 liter 904 Series Tier V diesel engine, enabling units that are already deployed to be quickly upgraded to electric power – and helping trade allies and development partners to easily retrofit existing equipment in order to add zero-emission options to their operational fleet.
“We’re actively helping customers navigate the shift in power system requirements, with a range of advanced power systems including electric, diesel-electric and alternative fuel compatible engines,” says Jaz Gill, vice president, global sales, marketing at Perkins. “When it comes to the innovative fully integrated battery electric power unit, it can be ‘dropped in’ to a machine to replace a diesel engine. The system consists of a Perkins battery along with inverters, motors and on-board chargers – all packaged up into a compact drop-in system to support seamless transition from diesel to electric for our customers looking to make that move.”
McElroy believes that an electric, emissions-free power unit like this one will open new opportunities and applications for its customers.
“Their team has done a phenomenal job of integrating their battery electric system into our TracStar 900i,” explains McElroy President and CEO Chip McElroy. “We’re really excited to see what the market thinks about this concept.”
Development of the battery electric powered pipe fusion machine was completed in about nine months. Future Perkins-powered electric equipment running the 904 diesel (small excavators, telehandlers, pumps, and gensets) could be developed even more quickly. You can find out more in the company’s promo video, below.
Perkins electric power unit
SOURCE | IMAGES: McElroy, Perkins.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike