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El Niño, Climate Change And India's Monsoon | Why 2026 Matters | Sunita Narain Show

India's monsoon is the country's true pierce brosnan finance minister. It determines food production, water availability, livelihoods and economic growth. north korea In 2026, India faces the combined challenge of a strong El Niño and a warming climate, raising concerns about below average rainfall and increasing weather extremes. As weather systems become more volatile, the need to value every drop of rain and strengthen rainwater harvesting has never been greater. Understanding the monsoon is essential to understanding India's future. Join this channel to get access to perks: Down to Earth is Science and Environment fortnightly published by the Society for Environmental Communication, New Delhi. We ian watkins publish news and analysis on issues that deal with sustainable development, which we scan through the eyes of science and environment.

India should stop adding solar farms. Now

India should stop adding solar farms. Now On 20 July, people in Haryana woke up to yet another “monsoon” day stripped of the scent of fresh rain. Instead, they were subjected to scorching heat and soaring mercury. Angry locals took to the streets in five districts, protesting the ensuing power cuts.  Interestingly, Haryana’s energy shortages have historically been close to zero, and its power-distribution companies are the healthiest in the country.  India’s installed power-generation capacity has also been moving at a clip, largely due to rising solar-power generation. Over the last decade, installed solar-power capacity has jumped 58X to touch 162 GW, as the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy told the... Read more at https://the-ken.com/story/india-should-stop-adding-solar-farms-now/

UT-Level Workshop on Solid and Plastic Waste Management Begins in Sri Vijaya Puram

The Andaman & Nicobar Pollution Control Committee (ANPCC), under the Department of Science & Technology, Andaman & Nicobar Administration, in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, is organising a two-day UT-Level Master Trainer Capacity Building Workshop-cum-Handholding Exercise on Operationalizing Solid Waste Management and Plastic Waste Management on July 28 and 29 at the Training Hall of the Directorate of Disaster Management, Sri Vijaya Puram.

IIT Roorkee trains polytechnic students in wastewater reuse

Twenty-two final-year diploma engineering students from government polytechnics across Uttarakhand underwent a two-day hands-on training programme at IIT Roorkee on sustainable wastewater treatment and reuse. They learnt how treated wastewater can be safely used for irrigation, toilet flushing and industrial applications to reduce pressure on freshwater resources. The participants, pursuing civil and environmental engineering courses at government polytechnics in rural and remote parts of the state, attended the programme organised by IIT Roorkee's Department of Civil Engineering under NTPC's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, in collaboration with NAMTECH, Ahmedabad. During the training, the students visited the institute's sewage treatment plant (STP), where they saw treated wastewater being reused for horticulture and toilet flushing across the campus. They also learnt to analyse water quality by testing pH, turbidity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and faecal coliforms. They also gained an understanding of how technologies such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis produce reclaimed water suitable for reuse. The initiative comes at a time when water recycling is emerging as a key solution to India's growing water crisis. According to a recent Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report, only about 28% of the country's urban wastewater is treated, while the rest flows into rivers and lakes. Experts say expanding wastewater recycling could significantly reduce the demand for freshwater. Prof Absar Ahmed Kazmi, convenor of the programme, said: "Globally, around 42% of domestic wastewater was still not safely treated in 2022, highlighting the urgent need for better treatment and reuse technologies." IIT Roorkee Director Prof KK Pant interacted with the participants during the field visit and stressed the importance of practical learning and innovation in addressing future water and environmental challenges. "This initiative aims to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world engineering while promoting a circular water economy," he said. Kartikey Nautiyal, a third-year student at Government Polytechnic, Narendra Nagar, said the training gave participants exposure to technologies and practical applications they may not have experienced at their institutions. "Such programmes should ideally last five to seven days so that students get more indepth classroom learning as well as greater laboratory exposure," he said.

ANPCC in Collaboration with CSE, New Delhi to Organise UT-Level Master Trainer Capacity Building Workshop-cum-Handholding Exercise

The Andaman & Nicobar Pollution Control Committee (ANPCC), Department of Science & Technology, Andaman & Nicobar Administration, in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, is organising a UT-Level Master Trainer Capacity Building Workshop-cum-Handholding Exercise on Operationalizing Solid Waste Management and Plastic Waste Management on 28th and 29th July, 2026 at the Training Hall, Directorate of Disaster Management, Sri Vijaya Puram. The workshop is being conducted under the India-Norway Marine Pollution Initiative (INMPI) Phase-II of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India, with the objective of strengthening institutional capacities for the effective implementation of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026 and the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 (as amended). The 2-day programme will bring together officials from Government Departments, Urban and Rural Local Bodies, waste management agencies, bulk waste generators, Self-Help Groups, Non-Governmental Organisations, and other key stakeholders. Technical experts from MoEF&CC’s partnered institution like the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi and ANPCC will conduct interactive sessions on source segregation, waste quantification and characterisation, Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), plastic waste management, Bulk Waste Generator compliances and other best practices for sustainable waste management in the Island ecosystem. ANPCC has extended invitations to concerned Government Departments and stakeholders to participate actively in the programme, which aims to develop a pool of Master Trainers capable of promoting effective implementation of waste management rules across the Union Territory. The initiative reflects the Administration’s commitment to environmental protection, sustainable waste management, and a cleaner and healthier A&N Island.

Renewable energy expansion, battery storage push key to green transition: Pralhad Joshi

Offering a broader climate perspective, Centre for Science and Environment Director General Sunita Narain said that "there is one extreme weather event a day happening across India," arguing that climate action must go beyond emission reduction to include resilient cities, stronger local environmental governance and sustainable development. Renewable energy minister Pralhad Joshi said India's drive in battery storage systems, along with rapid expansion of wind and solar power would play a key role in pushing the country's clean energy transition. Addressing the Adani Presents Times Network Sustainability Conclave 2026, Joshi said the push towards battery storage, coupled with a strong focus on wind and solar energy, would bring down electricity costs.

The Math of Growing Sustainability

Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director of CSE, explained how pollution gets trapped near the ground by atmospheric conditions and spirals upward fast. India needs roughly a 60% cut in pollution to consistently meet clean air standards, she said, with vehicle emissions the biggest single source. Pollutants from power plants, vehicles, industry and fires don't just add up either, they react with each other in the air to form secondary pollutants that can be worse than what caused them. Anant Mohan, Head of Pulmonology at AIIMS, New Delhi, said the health toll shows up everywhere, in the eyes, the skin, the lungs, the whole respiratory system. India needs to cut its pollution levels by roughly 60% just to meet its own clean air standards, a figure that came up more than once through the evening. More than 20 speakers gathered at Hyatt Regency, New Delhi, on July 23 for The Green Shift 2026, hosted by Open and the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, to talk about energy, air, finance and the choices that will decide whether India's growth story and its climate deadline can coexist. Opening the summit, Open editor-in-chief S Prasannarajan set the tone for what followed. "We are all environmentalists today," he said, arguing that sustainability had stopped being a niche concern and become central to how societies think about growth and the future. What we need, he said, "is not environmental absolutism. What we need is environmental empathy," before adding the line that stuck: "To remain green is to remain human." Does India actually have a plan to grow without wrecking the planet it's growing on, or just a plan to talk about one? The first panel opened with energy security. Saurabh Kumar, an energy transition enabler and former Vice President of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, argued that India's shift to cleaner power depends on how well the country manages that security through the transition, not after it. Mohit Bhargava, Country Director of the India Energy and Climate Center, picked up the thread. Much of India's domestic gas use, he said, could simply be swapped for electricity. The bigger obstacle is money and infrastructure. Bhargava was clear that the government now has to do more of the heavy lifting, through investment and policy that support long, unglamorous shifts rather than quick wins. That investment gap runs deep. Vibhuti Garg, Director of South Asia at IEEFA, said commercial investors won't back clean energy at scale until the technology has matured and proven itself financially, so public money has to carry the early stages. She cited a study putting India's clean energy investment need at roughly $256 billion between 2026 and 2070, and said the government needs to start green budgeting now to plan for it. Kumar returned to make one more point: AI has a role here too. Used well, he argued, it can optimise electricity demand and grid management, making the whole system more efficient and, in turn, speeding up decarbonisation. The next panel moved from energy to infrastructure. Amit Thakur, Associate Director and Head of CSR at TERI, told businesses in the room that decarbonisation needs to sit inside long-term financial planning, not get treated as a side project. Joshua Wycliffe, Director of the Global Biofuels Alliance, made the case for biofuels as one part of a wider mix of solutions rather than a competitor to solar or wind. Scaling them up is a policy problem as much as a technical one, he said, pointing to India's new mandate requiring 1% of aviation fuel to come from sustainable sources as a small but real push in that direction. Then the conversation turned to something Delhi residents already live with. The panel "Can India Breathe Better?" dealt with air quality, and it didn't pull punches. Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director of CSE, explained how pollution gets trapped near the ground by atmospheric conditions and spirals upward fast. India needs roughly a 60% cut in pollution to consistently meet clean air standards, she said, with vehicle emissions the biggest single source. Pollutants from power plants, vehicles, industry and fires don't just add up either, they react with each other in the air to form secondary pollutants that can be worse than what caused them. Anant Mohan, Head of Pulmonology at AIIMS, New Delhi, said the health toll shows up everywhere, in the eyes, the skin, the lungs, the whole respiratory system.

HUDCO CMD Sanjay Kulshrestha Highlights Financing Roadmap for India’s Urban Bus Sector

The roundtable discussion, organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), was held under the theme “Reinventing Urban Bus: Financial Strategies and Strategic Roadmap for Scaling India’s Bus Sector.” The event brought together policymakers, researchers, multilateral agencies and representatives from civil society to discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in strengthening bus-based public transport in Indian cities.

After the water recedes

Large parts of northern and northeast India are flooded yet again, triggering landslides and creating havoc. In 2025, the country recorded extreme weather on all but three of 273 days between January and September, according to an analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment. Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index 2026 placed India ninth among the world’s most climate-affected nations over the past three decades, with roughly 80,000 lives and $170 billion lost to climate disasters since 1995. India is not alone in this reckoning. In the recent past, Nepal’s capital was drenched by relentless rain, Europe baked under a heatwave that pushed temperatures over 40°C and triggered wildfires from southern France to Greece, and over a hundred million Americans sweltered under heat alerts in South Dakota. These are geographically disconnected incidents but symptoms of one condition: infrastructure built for a stable climate is being tested by a variable, uncertain climate. This is the central insight of resilience science, which we can no longer ignore. Our spatial, social, and ecological systems, including roads, power grids, and drainage, are not isolated assets but complex, adaptive parts that influence each other’s behaviour. A blocked drain floods a substation, triggering a blackout that ripples far beyond the street – seemingly small disruptions cascading into large ones. The response so far has been to fund relief after the fact, but resilience science offers a different starting point. This begins with a distinction between three kinds of resilience: specific resilience (defence against one known threat), generic resilience (flexible capacity to absorb any shock), and undesirable resilience (systems that resist change even though they cause the harm).

The Cars India's EV Plan Leaves Behind

An analysis in Down To Earth, published by the Centre for Science and Environment, found that the 18 per cent tax on parts makes conversion "unviable in comparison to a new EV." Financing is scarce, it added, and the sums favour fleets over individual owners. More than 30 crore vehicles run on India's roads, and the majority burn petrol or diesel. The country's plan to clean them up runs almost entirely through new sales, electric cars, electric scooters and tighter emission limits on the next model to leave the factory. It says far less about the vehicles already out there, which will keep running, and emitting, for a decade or more before anyone retires them. That silence is where a small industry has set up. Retrofitment takes an existing petrol or diesel car and either rebuilds its drivetrain to add an electric motor and battery to make it cleaner, or strips out the engine altogether. The rules that govern it are still relatively new, and Folks Motor is among the few firms to have opened workshops for it. The pressure that makes such a business viable is newer still. India's scrappage policy, in force since 2021, made automated fitness tests compulsory for both commercial and private vehicles as of June 2024. Older vehicles that fail them are meant to come off the road. The capital even went further. On July 1, 2025, Delhi launched a policy: diesel cars older than 10 years and petrol cars older than 15 were to be denied fuel in Delhi and five neighbouring districts. But the implementation ran into many technical issues. Nevertheless, retrofitting is one of the few legal ways out. The conversions fall under an automotive standard, AIS-123. Both the kit and the workshop must be cleared by an agency such as the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) or the International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT). Under a draft policy floated in early 2026, Delhi offered ₹50,000 each to the first 1,000 cars converted from engine to electric. There is a catch the sales pitch skates over. Only stripping the engine out and going fully electric changes the fuel on the car's papers and earns a reprieve. A hybrid conversion leaves the engine in, and with it, the car's age. Folks Motor was founded in 2016 by Nikhil Anand Khurana, who patented the idea in 2012 as a second-year engineering student and fitted an early version to a Maruti 800 soon after. His starting point was waste. A manual petrol car, he argues, loses much of its energy in the clutch and gearbox, and an electric motor can win some of it back. "Any fuel-efficient internal combustion engine is 20 to 30 per cent efficient," he says. "If you integrate an 80 per cent efficient electric powertrain into it, the overall efficiency gain is somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent." He has little time for the fuel-side answer the government has pushed hardest, the rising share of ethanol in petrol. "Flex fuel does not have a large effect on fuel efficiency," he says. "But a retrofit with a flex-fuel engine can cut emissions by 80 per cent." Bolting on a Second Powertrain The conversion adds a second, electric powertrain to the one the car already has. Folks brands the platform xEV and the system that runs it ReGeN Drive. It sells the conversion two ways, as a kit fitted to a customer's own car, or as a ready-converted car it certifies and resells. Into the engine bay go an electric motor and a generator. A lithium-ion battery pack sits in the boot, taking up about a quarter of it, along with a motor controller. A converter steps the high battery voltage down to the ordinary 12-volt system that runs the lights and the radio. The petrol engine itself is left in place. The system works through the car's existing manual gearbox. In electric mode, it drives gear-free from rest to a claimed 60 to 80 kmph. Beyond that, the petrol engine drives through the normal gears, with the motor assisting, and the setup can run as a series, parallel or plug-in hybrid. What marks it out from an electric car is that the driver need never plug in. The battery refills itself as the car runs, drawing on the engine through the generator and recovering energy under braking. After 70 to 100 km of fuel driving, Folks says, it holds around 50 km of electric range, with an optional plug-in socket for those who want one. For now, the kit fits only a set list of Maruti Suzuki models, all with 1,000cc to 1,500cc petrol engines and manual gearboxes. They run from the Swift and WagonR to the Ertiga and Ciaz. Each car, the company says, is first checked for the condition of its chassis, brakes, suspension, wiring, weight and age. Afterwards, it is subjected to insulation, high-voltage safety, waterproofing, thermal, and road tests. Folks puts the turnaround at one to three days, and the warranty at two years or 50,000 km. An Integrator, Not a Manufacturer Folks sells engineering as its advantage. But when asked which suppliers stand behind the kit, and where it buys its motors, the company would name none, calling the arrangements confidential. The motors, it said, come from a mix of domestic and international suppliers, and depending on the vehicle platform and application, components are sourced from suppliers specialising in electric motors, thermal management, wiring harnesses and other critical subsystems. Its own work is the systems layer, assessing the car, integrating the parts, writing the software that governs them and building the high-voltage safety electronics. In plain terms, the pieces that actually move the car are bought in, and what Folks makes is the integration and the code. The split is common among retrofitters. It also means the durability of a Folks conversion depends heavily on suppliers. The Economics, and Who They Suit Price is one of the obstacles. Folks quotes ₹4 lakh to ₹6 lakh to convert a car, ₹1.5 lakh to ₹2 lakh for a three-wheeler or small commercial vehicle, and ₹8 lakh to ₹10 lakh for a bus. A used version of a BS6 hatchback usually costs less than the lower end of that car figure. The wider evidence is not kind to the private buyer. An analysis in Down To Earth, published by the Centre for Science and Environment, found that the 18 per cent tax on parts makes conversion "unviable in comparison to a new EV." Financing is scarce, it added, and the sums favour fleets over individual owners. Khurana's defence rests on running cost, which he puts at roughly half, with fleet operators recovering the outlay in 18 to 24 months. Folks' own figures for that saving are not fixed. Its website offers buyers of the kit 70 per cent lower running costs and 60 per cent better mileage. A ready-converted car is advertised at 30 per cent savings and 40 per cent better mileage. The claim shifts with the product. Folks says it has converted more than 250 vehicles. It also claims its parts sit in some 2 lakh two-wheelers, close to 10 lakh three-wheelers and 3 to 4 lakh pieces of farm equipment, but those are components sold to other manufacturers, not cars it has electrified. On the order book, he is frank about the gap. "When the order book is 150 to 250 crore, I have only been able to fulfil 50 to 70 crore," he says, pointing to shortages of semiconductors and raw materials. The Carmakers' Objection The industry Folks wants to work alongside is, for now, mostly sceptical. Only a few global carmakers, Toyota among them, have shown any warmth to retrofitting. Swapping an engine for a battery and motor, experts say, changes a car's weight, software and handling in ways that need engineering built into the platform and cannot be added afterwards. Khurana meets the safety charge directly. "If these platforms were really unsafe," he asks, "why did ARAI do all the work on them in the first place?" He reads the resistance as commercial rather than technical, since every car converted is a new one unsold. "Even now, when carmakers oppose retrofitment, we tell them this market will grow," he says. His patience with the argument at home, however, is thinning. "India will question everything," he says. "It has been questioning retrofitment even as the world adopts it." The company is now pushing into Europe and export markets. None of this settles whether the conversions work as promised, because the evidence is not yet in. Autocar Professional has not driven a Folks-converted car or visited its plants at Sonipat and Manesar, and the figures here are the company's own. What a fair test would look for is clear enough, and it follows from the company's own claims. Whether the 50 km of electric range holds up after a few years with a battery charged by the engine rather than a plug. Whether a kit fitted in a workshop performs as well as one on a test bench. The problem Folks is chasing is real, and the country has not found a better answer for the fleet it already owns. On the evidence so far, the idea holds promise and is worth considering.

Prescription for Safer Food

A few years ago, the EU issued directives on the use of antibiotics in the food it imports. This meant animal products, including fish, dairy and honey, produced using antibiotics as growth promoters or to increase yield would not be allowed into the bloc. It also put out a list of antibiotics, deemed critical for humans, which would be banned for veterinary use. When this was released in 2023, India was omitted from the list of countries allowed to export aquaculture and poultry products to the EU from September 2026, when the directive would come into force. This was done, according to the EU, because of lack of information and regulations on the use of antibiotics in India’s foodproducing sectors. The Indian government responded. In October 2024, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) published a list of antibiotics banned for use at any stage of the production of meat, milk, poultry, eggs and aquaculture products. It also set tolerance limits—also called Maximum Residue Limit (MRL)—for antibiotics that were permissible, requiring producers to ensure that residues in food did not exceed stipulated thresholds. In May 2025, the Union health ministry issued a draft notification banning the veterinary use of 34 of the 37 antibiotics that the EU classifies as critical for humans. It was notified in September that year and stated that safer alternatives were available for treating diseases in animals. In May 2026, the EU revised its exclusion list and added India to the list of countries permitted to export animal products to the bloc after September 2026. The questions I would like to discuss with you are as follows: One, why do such critical policies related to food safety and public health have to be driven by external consumer pressure? Antibiotic resistance is a silent pandemic, and we know that the Indian government is deeply committed to the issue. We as a country cannot afford the health burden of lifesaving medicines becoming ineffective and hence, the agency and not by the company exporting the food item. It will also conduct audits in exporting countries and spot checks at the border. The system is designed to push the red button and ratchet up the numbers of physical inspection if one item fails the analytic check; multiple failures could lead to serious consequences. But what about the food that is not exported? The third question is, how can farmers remain productive without the use of antibiotics—or for that matter, pesticides and other toxins? Ultimately, this is not just a regulatory challenge; it requires changes in the way food is grown. Farmers use antibiotics for three purposes—to promote growth in animals; to prevent diseases because of lack of hygiene or because of high density of animals; and then to treat diseases. Now farmers will need to prevent diseases, not by using antibiotics but by improving conditions in which animals are bred and food is produced. The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) has worked with its farmers to promote ethnomedicine—traditional practices for managing animal health—and showed it is possible to reduce the use of antibiotics. This is the win-win we need in our world. government has been taking steps to contain the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals. In 2010, based on an analytical study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the government issued an advisory against the use of antibiotics in honey, which was later followed by a ban. In 2019, it banned the use of colistin in food-producing animals and in aquaculture—this is because colistin is the top-reserved antibiotic for humans and needs full protection against overuse. Then policymakers were contemplating bans on antibiotics in animal feed and other steps but stopped short of adopting a comprehensive framework. This was finally done, prodded by the need to protect our export markets. What is good is that these regulations are not just for food destined for the EU, but will also apply to the meat, milk, eggs, honey and fish sold within India. It will protect our health. The issue is not just about antibiotic use; it is about the safety of the food we consume. We need robust standards for pesticide residues, food additives and other toxins—not just to ensure that India’s food is good for export but also to protect our health. A quick dive into the US Food and Drug Administration’s import refusal database shows that some 2,700 food consignments from India were rejected in 2024-25. These included spices, rice, pulses and lentils, flagged for excessive or unapproved pesticide residues. This leads to the next question: how will these standards be enforced? Importing countries have developed monitoring systems based on quality and residue checks in authorised laboratories and even at their borders. The EU plans to ensure compliance with its directive by asking every single shipment to have a health certificate, issued by a government

भारत ने रचा इतिहास : रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी का उत्पादन पहली बार 100 गीगावाट के पार, बिजली सप्लाई में रिकॉर्ड 42.79% हिस्सेदारी

India RE Record: भारत ने स्वच्छ ऊर्जा (Clean Energy) के क्षेत्र में एक और वैश्विक कीर्तिमान स्थापित कर दिया है. देश के कुल बिजली आपूर्ति ढांचे में पहली बार परिवर्तनीय नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा (Variable Renewable Energy - VRE) यानी सौर और पवन ऊर्जा के संयुक्त उत्पादन 100 गीगावाट (GW) के ऐतिहासिक आंकड़े को पार कर गया है.यह अभूतपूर्व सफलता इस महीने में लगातार दो दिन 13 और 14 जुलाई 2026 को दर्ज की गयी. इसके साथ ही, कुल पावर सप्लाई पाई (Power Supply Pie) में वीआरई (VRE) की हिस्सेदारी 42.79 प्रतिशत तक पहुंच गयी, जो अब तक का सबसे उच्चतम स्तर है. टूट गए सारे पुराने रिकॉर्ड : दोपहर 12 बजे रचा इतिहास इस ऐतिहासिक मील के पत्थर से जुड़े मुख्य आंकड़े इस प्रकार हैं. तत्काल उत्पादन (Instantaneous Generation): 13 जुलाई 2026 को दोपहर 12:05 बजे जमीन पर स्थापित यूटिलिटी-स्केल VRE जनरेशन 103.7 गीगावाट के सर्वकालिक उच्च स्तर पर पहुंच गया. पवन ऊर्जा की छलांग : ठीक एक दिन पहले (12 जुलाई) की शाम को पवन ऊर्जा (Wind Power) ने अपने अब तक के सबसे उच्चतम स्तर 36.6 गीगावाट के आंकड़े को पार किया था. दूसरे दिन भी निरंतरता : 14 जुलाई को भी रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी का जनरेशन और ग्रिड में इसकी हिस्सेदारी इसी रिकॉर्ड स्तर पर बनी रही. भीषण गर्मी में 270 GW की पीक डिमांड को मिला सहारा इस साल गर्मियों के मौसम में भीषण हीटवेव (लू) और कूलिंग (एसी/कूलर) की भारी मांग के कारण भारत की बिजली की मांग 2 बार 270 GW के अब तक के सबसे उच्चतम स्तर पर पहुंच गयी थी. लेकिन इस भारी दबाव के बावजूद, रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी ने ग्रिड पर पारंपरिक स्रोतों (कोयला आदि) का बोझ काफी हद तक कम किया. उदाहरण के लिए, जब 25 अप्रैल को बिजली की मांग 270 गीगावाट थी, तब पीक आवर्स के दौरान सौर ऊर्जा (Solar Power) ने 57 गीगावाट और दोपहर के समय रिकॉर्ड 81 गीगावाट का योगदान दिया, जो इसके इतिहास में सबसे अधिक है. 50 फीसदी के करीब गैर-जीवाश्म ईंधन की हिस्सेदारी वर्ष 2026 की गर्मी में अप्रैल महीने से ही कुल बिजली आपूर्ति में रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी (RE) की हिस्सेदारी 35 से 42 प्रतिशत के बीच बनी हुई है. जब इसमें जल विद्युत (Hydro) और परमाणु ऊर्जा (Nuclear) को भी जोड़ दिया जाता है, तो देश की कुल बिजली आपूर्ति में गैर-जीवाश्म ईंधन (Non-Fossil Fuel) का हिस्सा लगभग 50 प्रतिशत तक पहुंच जाता है. ग्लोबल बेंचमार्क बन रहा भारत का बदलाव : एक्सपर्ट क्लाइमेट ट्रेंड्स की एनर्जी लीड श्रेया जय कहती हैं कि यह भारत में रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी के लिए एक ऐतिहासिक वर्ष है. देश के ग्रिड ने न केवल 100 गिगावाट से अधिक रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी को अवशोषित (Absorb) किया, बल्कि यह पूरी तरह सुरक्षित और घटना-मुक्त रहा. अब पारंपरिक स्रोतों की जगह रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी अपनी जगह पक्की कर रहा है. नेशनल सोलर एनर्जी फेडरेशन ऑफ इंडिया के सीईओ सुब्रमण्यम पुलीपाका की नजर में यह मील का पत्थर दर्शाता है कि एक बड़ी और तेजी से बढ़ती अर्थव्यवस्था ऊर्जा सुरक्षा, सामर्थ्य (Affordability) और कार्बन मुक्ति (Decarbonization) को एक साथ कैसे हासिल कर सकती है. भारत का यह बदलाव अब एक ग्लोबल बेंचमार्क बन रहा है. एम्बर के वरिष्ठ ऊर्जा विश्लेषक नेशविन रोड्रिगेज कहते हैं कि 100 गीगावाट का यह आंकड़ा भारत के पावर सिस्टम में एक स्ट्रक्चरल शिफ्ट को दर्शाता है. रिन्यूएबल एनर्जी अब केवल पारंपरिक ऊर्जा की पूरक नहीं रह गयी है, बल्कि राष्ट्रीय बिजली मांग को पूरा करने का केंद्र बनती जा रही है. भविष्य की चुनौतियां : एनर्जी स्टोरेज और ग्रिड फ्लेक्सिबिलिटी की जरूरत इस बड़ी सफलता के साथ ही विशेषज्ञों ने भारत के सामने अगली सीमाओं और चुनौतियों को भी रेखांकित किया है. रात के समय और गैर-धूप वाले घंटों में चौबीसों घंटे बिजली आपूर्ति सुनिश्चित करने के लिए बड़े पैमाने पर बैटरी स्टोरेज सिस्टम को बढ़ाना होगा. राज्यों के बिजली बेड़ों को अधिक लचीला बनाना होगा, ताकि बिजली की बर्बादी (Curtailment) न हो. सेंटर फॉर साइंस एंड एनवायरनमेंट (CSE) के निवित कुमार यादव के अनुसार, आने वाले समय में क्लीन एनर्जी वेस्ट (जैसे सोलर पैनल स्क्रैप) के सर्कुलर इकॉनोमी प्लानिंग पर भी नीतिगत ध्यान देना जरूरी होगा.

भारत की पहली हाइड्रोजन ट्रेन दौड़ी: क्या मेट्रो और बुलेट ट्रेन भी H2 फ्यूल पर चलेंगी? जानिए एक्सपर्ट का जवाब

सेंटर फॉर साइंस एंड एनवायरनमेंट की इलेक्ट्रिक मोबिलिटी प्रोग्राम की सीनियर प्रोग्राम मैनेजर मौसमी मोहंती ने कहा, हाइड्रोजन फ्यूल अलग से बनाने के लिए उसे कंप्रेस किया जाता है. उसे फिर रीफ्यूलिंग स्टेशन तक लाते हैं और ट्रेन में लगे स्टोरेज टैंक में भरते हैं. ट्रेन के लिए जींद में हाइड्रोजन प्लांट और रीफ्यूलिंग सेंटर बनाया गया है. हाइड्रोजन रीफ्यूलिंग में कंप्रेशन सिस्टम, हाई प्रेशर स्टोरेज टैंक, डिस्पेंसिंग पार्ट्स लगते हैं. रिफ्यूलिंग प्लांट में लीकेज और ज्यादा तापमान न हो, इसका ध्यान रखने को अलर्ट सिस्टम भी होता है.

What the Western Ghats map leaves out

More than a decade after the first draft notification, the Centre is moving to notify the Western Ghats as an ecologically sensitive area (ESA), State by State, starting with Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Goa. The sixth draft, issued on July 31, 2024, covers about 56,825 sq km across six States and lapses in late July 2026. It arrives in the middle of another monsoon and another set of landslides: a fresh slide on an under-construction tunnel road in Wayanad this July, two years after the Mundakkai and Chooralmala disaster that killed several hundred people. The public debate remains the same: conservation versus development, and the Centre versus resistant States. Beneath that debate lies a policy choice that shapes far more than the headlines suggest. That choice is the line the Kasturirangan Committee drew in 2013 between “natural” and “cultural” landscapes. Using satellite imagery, it classified about 60 per cent of the Western Ghats’ roughly 1,64,280 sq km area as cultural landscape, including settlements, farms, and plantations. The remaining 40 per cent, consisting largely of relatively unfragmented forests, was classified as natural landscape, from which the ESA was carved out. The restrictions that give the notification its force, including bans on new mining and quarrying, red-category industries, thermal power projects, and large construction, apply only within this natural landscape. The cultural landscape is excluded. This is presented as a technical boundary. It is not. It reflects a policy decision about which landscapes are considered worth protecting. The line closely follows the most populated, most contested, and most plantation-dominated parts of the Western Ghats. Those are the areas that now fall outside the regulatory framework. State governments recognised the implications immediately, which is why many of their objections amount to demands for a larger carve-out. Kerala wants the Cardamom Hills and parts of Idukki excluded. Karnataka, which has the largest proposed ESA, rejects the framework altogether. Maharashtra has sought the exclusion of 378 villages, while Goa has asked for 21. The distinction between natural and cultural landscapes has become the mechanism through which inhabited and commercially active slopes are left out of the map. The problem is that these are also the slopes where the risk is greatest. The deadliest recent landslides in the Western Ghats have occurred not in remote forests but in settled plantation areas. Wayanad’s Meppadi region, identified as ecologically sensitive by the Gadgil Committee in 2011, lies within the kind of terrain that the later framework places outside protection. No single landslide can be directly attributed to this policy choice. Slope failures have multiple causes, with extreme rainfall playing the largest role. Even so, the pattern is difficult to ignore. Quarrying, slope-cutting, and unregulated construction continue in the cultural landscape under lighter scrutiny, while the people living below these activities bear the consequences. Sunita Narain, who served on the Kasturirangan Committee, has written that the panel chose to protect what remained of the natural landscape, treating the altered areas as difficult to restore. Kerala later pushed the boundary further. In 2018, the Centre removed another 3,115 sq km from the protected regime at the State’s request. The second exclusion is less visible but may prove more significant over time. By defining the cultural landscape as a zone of economic activity that should remain outside regulation, the framework treats the people who live there as those to be exempted from restrictions, rather than as participants in conservation. This marks a departure from an alternative approach that already exists in Indian law. The Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights it recognises, give gram sabhas the legal authority to protect, manage, and govern their forests and commons. Gadgil’s original report, despite its controversial reputation, moved in this direction. As Narain has noted, it argued for community rights and for local people as partners in conservation. The Kasturirangan framework took a different path by concentrating decision-making within the environmental bureaucracy. Across much of the cultural landscape, Community Forest Resource rights remain absent. Residents receive neither the protection that stronger regulation of quarrying and construction could provide nor the legal authority to manage the forests and slopes on which they depend. They are excluded from both. Is the carve-out pro-farmer? The carve-out is often defended as being pro-farmer, protecting smallholders from distant regulation. Some of that concern is genuine. Yet the biggest beneficiaries of the exemption are commercial quarrying, large plantations, and construction, rather than marginal cultivators. The people the exemption is meant to protect are often the same people exposed when a hillside above a plantation collapses. This is not an argument for reviving the broad interpretation of the Gadgil Committee’s recommendations and extending blanket restrictions across inhabited areas. That approach, whether or not it accurately reflected Gadgil’s intent, contributed to the rejection of the original report and deepened public distrust. As Sunita Narain has noted, poorly designed restrictions in other eco-sensitive areas have alienated poor communities and weakened support for conservation. The point is simpler. A rights-based alternative already exists, and the current framework does not make use of it. A more defensible approach would begin by recognising the cultural landscape for what it is. Agroforestry, home gardens, paddy fields, sacred groves, and even shaded plantations help regulate water, stabilise slopes, and store carbon. Treating these landscapes as “not nature” excludes those ecological functions from the calculations that determine protection. A broader approach to valuation, one that considers ecological and cultural value alongside economic value, would recognise their contribution. Regulation of genuinely destructive activities such as quarrying, slope-cutting, and large construction could then be linked to community governance under Community Forest Resource rights, rather than relying solely on the forest department. The Centre is already considering financial incentives for States to support conservation. Part of that support could be directed to the gram sabhas and local communities that maintain these ecological services, rather than flowing only to State governments. None of this is straightforward. Implementation of the Forest Rights Act across the Western Ghats remains uneven. Community Forest Resource rights are limited in the plantation-dominated districts of Kerala and Karnataka. Payment schemes also carry the risk of being captured by powerful interests. These are challenges that call for careful design, not reasons to leave the people of the cultural landscape outside the framework. As the notifications are issued State by State, attention will focus on the number of square kilometres brought under protection. The more important questions are which landscapes the State considers worth protecting and who is given the authority to protect them. The distinction between natural and cultural landscapes answers both by excluding the same people twice: first from the map of protected nature, and then from the institutions responsible for protecting it. A framework that treats the cultural landscape as a source of ecological value and community rights, rather than simply as an exemption, would lead to a different outcome. The monsoon will continue to check that choice every year. Deepanjana Saha is a doctoral scholar and SAGE Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru.

Hydrogen-powered trains likely to play niche role in India: Experts

"A hydrogen fuel cell train is essentially an electric train that generates its own electricity on board. Instead of drawing power from overhead lines, hydrogen stored in high-pressure tanks reacts with oxygen from the air inside a fuel cell to produce electricity," Moushumi Mohanty, senior programme manager, electric mobility programme, at New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment, said.