“FOSSIL FUELS SHOULD BE PHASED-DOWN RATHER THAN PHASED-OUT”

Bhupender Yadav on India’s clean-energy transition, climate finance, pollution control and balancing energy security with national sustainability goals

- BY SURABHI & SIDDHARTH ZARABI

BHUPENDER YADAV HAS long moved between the worlds of law, politics and policy, first as an advocate and party organisational strategist, and is now India’s Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The Lok Sabha member from Alwar, Rajasthan, has chaired or served on several key Parliamentary Committees, including those examining GST, insolvency, corruption and forest conservation. Author of The Rise of the BJP and Supreme Court on Forest Conservation, Yadav brings to climate policy a lawyer’s precision and a politician’s instinct for balancing ambition with feasibility for India. In this interview at this year’s BT India’s Most Sustainable Companies event, he discusses the renewable-energy push, coal dependence, climate finance, air pollution, and the role of fossil fuels in our energy security. Edited excerpts:

SZ: How can we build a sustainable economy while protecting our environment?

The latest report by the International Renewable Energy Agency states that India has now become the world’s second-largest producer of solar energy. We are now producing more than the United States.

It was a coincidence that when I attended the G20 meeting in Cape Town, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) presented an assessment of the innovative efforts made by different countries after the Paris Agreement. Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the UNFCCC reviewed the ten-year period from 2015 to 2025 and stated that the milestones India has achieved in the field of renewable energy are remarkable and worthy of global recognition.