India Pledges $4.3 Billion for Cleaner Energy
The right-wing government of India, the world’s second-most populous country and its third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, said this week that it will spend $4.3 billion on a spate of clean energy and jobs programs — including green fuel, green energy, green farming, green mobility, green buildings, and green equipment, according to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Other investments will support transmission lines to bring solar power from the Himalayas to the rest of the country, as well as grid batteries and pumped storage — a way of storing energy from hydropower so it can be released during periods of high electricity demand. Counterintuitively, they will be overseen by the government’s oil ministry and will include funding for natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to climate change.
