India is on the cusp of becoming the world’s third-largest economy. But much of its infrastructure is yet to be built, a trajectory that is projected to quadruple energy demand by 2050.

During a Harvard Climate Action Week panel organized by the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School, Vikram Gandhi, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Praveer Sinha, CEO and Managing Director of Tata Power – one of India’s largest integrated power utilities – examined how India could pursue development while cutting emissions.

“Industrialized economies like the United States and Europe drove historical emissions,” Gandhi said. With a population north of 1.4 billion, India, by contrast, remains a low per capita emitter even as its aggregate emissions rise sharply. The country also faces multiple climate vulnerabilities. Eighty percent of its population is at risk of climate disaster: urban flooding and drought are pressuring communities to migrate to other regions. Extreme heatwaves are becoming more frequent and prolonged, and 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India.

“This is not a question of choice,” Sinha said of India’s need to decarbonize. “This is a question of survival.”

Balancing growth with decarbonization

For Gandhi, the challenge is structural.

“Development requires more steel, more cement, more power,” he said. “These are exactly the sectors that drive emissions.”

Electricity alone accounts for one-third of India’s emissions. Agriculture, manufacturing, transport, and hard-to-abate sectors like steel and cement make up most of the rest. India has pledged to hit net zero emissions by 2070, with interim goals including halving the emissions intensity of GDP by 2030 and scaling green hydrogen production. Nearly half of India’s installed electricity capacity is already from non-fossil sources, five years ahead of target.

But meeting demand growth while cutting emissions requires innovation at scale.

Sinha detailed how Tata Power is attempting to bridge reliability and decarbonization. The company has reduced coal’s share in its electricity supply from more than 90 percent in 2023 to 64 percent in 2024, with further reductions planned. But solar and wind are intermittent, he noted, and today’s batteries typically provide only a few hours of backup. To make clean energy available around-the-clock, Tata Power is investing in bundled solutions and developing pumped hydro projects.

“We cannot have a scenario of candlelight dinners every day,” Sinha quipped. “Supply has to be reliable, not just clean.” By as early as 2030, he believes his firm can provide industrial customers with at least 90 percent of their power needs from clean sources without increasing prices significantly.

Yet challenges remain. China dominates production of the raw materials needed for batteries and solar panels, like lithium and polysilicon. Tata Power is exploring alternative battery chemistries, and India is incentivizing domestic solar manufacturing. But, he notes, “the security of supply is as important as cost.”

A generational opportunity

Both spoke of the role of policy in accelerating change. Mandates, such as those requiring steelmaking to include a share of hydrogen, could level the playing field if paired with financial support for small and medium enterprises. Carbon markets, still incipient, could channel capital from the Global North to South, complementing India’s ambitious domestic targets. For investors, Sinha said, the imperative is clear: “What is good for the country is good for our company and our shareholders.”

Both agreed that disruption in energy technologies – from nuclear to superconductors to AI-enabled optimization – will create exciting opportunities.

“This is a generational, lifetime investment opportunity,” Gandhi said, addressing students. “We went from horse carriages to carbonized economies in a century. Now we must decarbonize everything. The innovation to do so is one of the greatest opportunities of our time.”