Mass migration to India’s cities will triple the size of its built environment by 2030, driving up energy use and carbon emissions. An expert on India’s energy sector looks at the country’s efforts to balance development and climate impact.
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Few countries face the challenge of balancing economic development and climate change as acutely as India, and in no other country is this balance likely to directly impact the lives of so many people.

Over the next decade, some 200 million rural Indians will move to urban centers. Many will join the middle class, creating new demand for goods and energy while tripling the size of India’s built environment. At the same time, rising temperatures and the desertification of India’s agricultural regions will challenge the country’s ability to feed itself.

Energy Policy Now guest Radhika Khosla, Visiting Scholar at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, looks at India’s growing demand for energy, and at how the development decisions the country makes today will to a large extent lock in place its energy needs and climate impact for decades to come.

Radhika Khosla is a Fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, India and India Fellow at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. She is also a visiting scholar at the MIT Energy Initiative, and a former Staff Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Related Content:
Energy Transformation and Air Quality in India http://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2017/11/10/energy-transformation-and-air-quality-india

Aligning Local Logic with Global Need http://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/aligning-local-logic-global-need