Energy in India's Future: Insights
The IFRI European Governance and Geopolitics of Energy Project intends this study to deepen public understanding of the magnitude of India's challenges.
In the decades following India's independence from British rule in 1947, the West's image of India was summarized in three simple clichés : the world's largest democracy, an impoverished continent and economic growth hampered by a fussy bureaucracy ant the caste system, all in a context of a particular religion.
The clichés are perhaps on of the reasons that the succes of India's green revolution was recognized so late, a revolution that allowed the country to develop its agricultural sector and to feed its population.
Since the 1990s, the easing of planning constraints have liberated the Indian economy and allowed it to embark on a more significant path of growth. New clichés have begun to replace the old: India will become a second China and, lagging by 10 to 20 years, will follow the same trajectory, with its development marked more by services and the use of renewable energy.
However, theses trends will not prevent primary energy demand from exploding. On the contrary, India faces difficult choices on how it increases clean, secure, affordable energy to all its citizens. Many of the choices are the same as found elsewhere, but on a scale matched only by China.
Available in:
Regions and themes
ISBN / ISSN
Share
This page contains only a summary of our work. If you would like to have access to all the information from our research on the subject, you can download the full version in PDF format.
Energy in India's Future: Insights
Jacques LESOURNE
Ancien Président du Comité scientifique du Centre Énergie
Center for Asian Studies
Asia is a nerve center for multiple global economic, political and security challenges. The Center for Asian Studies provides documented expertise and a platform for discussion on Asian issues to accompany decision makers and explain and contextualize developments in the region for the sake of a larger public dialogue.
The Center's research is organized along two major axes: relations between Asia's major powers and the rest of the world; and internal economic and social dynamics of Asian countries. The Center's research focuses primarily on China, Japan, India, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, but also covers Southeast Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Pacific Islands.
The Centre for Asian Studies maintains close institutional links with counterpart research institutes in Europe and Asia, and its researchers regularly carry out fieldwork in the region.
The Center organizes closed-door roundtables, expert-level seminars and a number of public events, including an Annual Conference, that welcome experts from Asia, Europe and the United States. The work of Center’s researchers, as well as that of their partners, is regularly published in the Center’s electronic journal Asie.Visions.
China and Trade in Critical Raw Materials (CRMs)
Critical raw materials (CRMs) have become central features of a new dynamic in global power politics, with China now wielding considerable leverage. Amid rising regional and global uncertainty, resource security is back in the spotlight as a key determinant of sovereignty and national security for Europe, its allies and its partners. The very survival of key, even vital industries, from automotive to aerospace to health to energy to defense, is at stake.
Japan’s Energy Policy after Hormuz. Security, Competitiveness, and Decarbonization
The 2026 Hormuz crisis has strengthened rather than weakened the rationale for Japan’s decarbonization strategy, contrary to what might have been expected. Rather than energy policy supplanting climate policy, the two should actually be viewed as inseparable.
Japan and Nuclear Weapons: Between Extended Deterrence and Normative Dilemmas
Since the late 1950s, Japan’s nuclear weapons policy has been based on the coexistence of two competing normative rationales: the rejection of nuclear weapons, rooted in the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the recognition of the central role of US extended nuclear deterrence for Japan’s security.
