India Requires Transition To Sustainability Without Undermining Basic Welfare: Hardeep Puri At WEF 2024

For more than 150 years, economies have been powered by fossil fuels, which include coal, oil, and natural gas. Currently, these fuels account for over 80 per cent of global energy production. Fossil fuels are made from the carbon-rich remains of plants and animals that were compressed, heated and degraded underground millions of years ago. Burning fossil fuels releases other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere along with the stored carbon.

The Earth's climate has changed dramatically as a result of an excess buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; this tendency will only get worse as more fossil fuels are used.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister Of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said that there are multiple changes taking place in the world and for a country like India it requires a transition to sustainability without undermining the need to deliver basic welfare to a large and growing population. We are close to a USD 4 trillion economy but with a lot of developmental challenges. If we look at the global scenarios today India’s consumption is growing at three times the global average. In the next 20 years, India will account for 25 per cent of energy demand globally. It is currently in the position of building between 700-900 million square metres of urban space every year. So, today what happens in India is also important for the rest of the world. 

“Both the America and European countries are promoting hydrogen and new technologies. If we look from a business perspective, we have promoted and enhanced the multiple persuades for carbon neutrality. We have been working very hard in Europe to provide with hydrogen-related technologies and in the United States we are working to supply our studies and commercialisation of carbon capture and at the same time we are exploring hydrogen business opportunities,” said Shunichi Miyanaga, Chairman of the Board, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

On how policies in Europe regarding New energy are working with Global goals Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy said, In Europe, we have finalised the legislative pieces that has been set for the target of 2030. To excel we are prioritising the technologies that will help us to save energy because the lesson learnt from the past two years is that despite the fact European consumers could replace a lot of Russian fossil fuel with alternative players but that would create unwanted consequences across the globe.

Meghan L. O’ Sullivan, Professor, at Harvard University said, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the largest piece of climate legislation the United States has ever undertaken. This is a great example of how domestic priorities are coming together to produce a piece of legislation that is aimed at advancing America’s climate agenda. A big portion of IRA is actually about domestic competitiveness and about the United States really wanting to bring manufacturing back to the country to provide more jobs with the real domestic agenda but it’s combined with the realisation that China has become the leader in energy transition and that’s going to have a lot of advantage economic and geopolitical to China.