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India Faces Clean Energy Challenges As Energy Demand Soars, Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Rise
The 2022 global energy crisis, together with India’s growing energy demand, has led the country to adopt a hybrid approach, expanding all forms of supply in 2023. This approach has pushed India’s total energy subsidies to 9-year high of Rs 3200 billion (USD 39.3 billion) for the fiscal year ending 2023, states new report titled ‘Mapping India’s Energy Policy: A Decade in Action’ by International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), an independent think tank working for a stable climate, sustainable resource management.
It states in recent years, India has positioned itself as an international climate leader, steering the G20 under its presidency to call for global renewable energy capacity to triple by 2030 while also funding decarbonization measures to decouple the fast-growing economy from greenhouse gas emissions and reach net-zero targets.
However, clean energy subsidies accounted for less than 10% of total energy subsidies in FY 2023, while coal, oil, and gas subsidies contributed around 40%. The majority of the remaining subsidies were for electricity consumption, particularly in agriculture.
In 2023 rising energy demands and the impact of the international energy price crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led India to put several measures in place that significantly increased support for fossil fuels. With an aim to protect low-income households, India responded to peaking fossil fuel prices in 2022/2023 by capping retail prices of petrol, diesel, and domestic liquefied petroleum gas; cutting taxes; providing direct budgetary transfers to businesses and consumers; and supporting existing energy supplies. As a result, oil and gas subsidies rose by 63% in FY 2023 compared to FY 2022, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
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