AI, energy, and India’s jobs reality

Peter Drucker once warned that the real danger in periods of upheaval is not change itself, but the habit of thinking with yesterday's logic.

- NISHANT SAHDEV

That warning fits today’s anxiety around artificial intelligence (Al) almost perfectly. AI is routinely described as a job-destroying force. Yet when one looks closely at where the global economy is actually adding jobs, a very different picture emerges — especially in energy.

India sits at the centre of this contradiction. Public debate is increasingly dominated by fears of Al-driven unemployment, even as India’s energy sector is quietly generating work at one of the fastest rates in the world. The World Energy Employment 2025 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) offers a useful reality check. In 2024, the global energy workforce reached 76 million people, growing 2.2 per cent — nearly twice the pace of overall global employment. More than five million energy jobs have been created since 2019, precisely during the years when Al adoption accelerated across industries.

Electricity has now become the single largest employer in the global energy system, overtaking oil, gas and coal. India is among the countries where this growth is steepest. That fact alone should give pause to the popular claim that AI is steadily eroding human work.

The fear persists because it tells a simple story: As machines become smarter, humans become redundant. But the electricity sector — the backbone of modern economic life — does not behave this way. Since 2019, electricity has been the fastest-growing source of energy employment worldwide. Solar power today employs more people than any other energy technology in history. Grid expansion, transmission lines, battery storage, nuclear maintenance, electric vehicle (EV) charging networks and renewable manufacturing have together created millions of jobs.