India is outpacing America in its transition to clean energy

First China, then India. The US is becoming a renewables laggard

- DAVID FICKLING

Once upon a time, the US was the world's sole clean energy superpower. Until 2011, it led the world in connecting wind and solar generators to the grid. Then China took over, to a point where its lead now looks unassailable: The People's Republic added eight times more renewables than the US last year. This year, India is likely to overtake America too.

The country connected 22 gigawatts of wind and solar in the first half—a dramatic recovery from a troubling slowdown in 2022 and 2023, and enough at full output to power nearly one-tenth of the grid. Assuming this is maintained through December, that should put India ahead of the 40GW that the US government expects this year.

It's also setting the world's most populous nation on course to hit a target of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's that once seemed implausible: to reach 500GW of non-fossil generation by 2030. Such a shift will herald the dawn of a new clean energy superpower, and give the world some of its best hopes of averting disastrous climate change.

It's a remarkable turnaround for a country whose renewable industry looked like a lost cause barely more than a year ago. What happened?