“With this new partnership, we will not stop until the goals of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Canada Strong are reached,” Carney said, citing the Hindi term for “self-reliant India.”

The agreement will see Saskatoon-based Camemco deliver nearly 22 million pounds of uranium fuel between 2027 and 2035, CBC reports. India currently has 25 nuclear reactors in operation, eight under construction, and plans to boost its nuclear capacity from 8.7 to 100 gigawatts by 2047, the national broadcaster adds.

A wide-ranging joint statement issued by Carney’s office also puts liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), crude oil and refined petroleum products at the centre of the expanded trade relationship.

Carney “framed this new course as not just a return to how things were but rather an ambitious revisioning of what the two Commonwealth countries can do together in an uncertain era marked by instability,” CBC writes. Just prior to his meeting with Modi, Carney said he hoped to secure a wider free trade agreement with India by the end of the year, possibly in time for a signing at this year’s G20 summit at a Trump property in Miami. The two leaders affirmed that timing after their one-on-one.

“With India positioned to be the largest contributor to incremental global energy demand growth over the next two decades, beyond its current position as the world’s third-largest oil consumer and fourth-largest LNG importer, both sides acknowledged the significant potential to further expand bilateral energy trade,” the joint statement declares. “This includes increased oil and LNG imports by India from Canada, as well as the supply of refined petroleum products from India to Canada. In this context, Canada reaffirmed its plans to expand heavy oil export infrastructure and supplies of LNG to the Indo-Pacific market through Canada’s stated goal of producing 50 million tonnes of LNG per year by 2030 and up to 100 million tonnes by 2040.”

The statement calls for broader cooperation “across clean energy and climate-related value chains, including renewable energy, hydrogen and its derivatives, biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel, battery storage, and electricity systems modernization, recognizing the central role of these sectors in advancing shared climate objectives and energy transition goals.” It says the two leaders also “underscored solutions for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as a key area of cooperation, offering a significant opportunity for the sustainable production of energy and critical minerals.”

And it celebrates a “comprehensive institutional framework to advance bilateral collaboration across solar, wind, bioenergy, small hydro, energy storage, and capacity-building” while recognizing India’s “leadership and capacity in large-scale solar and grid-level energy storage technologies along with scalable models in rooftop solar and other forms of distributed renewable energy solutions.”

CBC has a list of smaller deals that were announced or re-announced this week, including a 1.2-million-tonne coal export contract for British Columbia–based Elk Valley Resources, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada will also join the 112-member International Solar Alliance, first conceived by India in 2015 and launched by India and France in 2017.

News coverage of the announcement has focused extensively on the warming of relations after the former Justin Trudeau government concluded and the Modi government denied that India had conducted foreign interference in Canada. “Touting an approach he calls ‘values-based realism,’” The Globe and Mail writes, Carney “has largely sidestepped questions over meddling by New Delhi in Canada, including the allegations it was behind the 2023 murder of a Canadian Sikh activist. Last year, a public inquiry report flagged India as the ‘second most active country engaging in electoral foreign interference in Canada’ after China.”

“But, with Carney at the helm, the relationship has become friendlier with much more diplomatic dialogue – with even more to come after the prime minister invited Modi to visit Canada sometime soon,” CBC reports.

Uranium sale has ‘implications’

Just ahead of Carney’s visit, India’s high commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, said the country would be open to buying Canadian nuclear technology or taking an ownership stake in the country’s uranium mines. “We are willing to take whatever,” he told CBC. “Nuclear is a huge field in which we want to work together.”

The Canadian Press says Saskatchewan is the only province that exports uranium. And in New Delhi Monday, Premier Scott Moe declared it a “great day” for his province. “Saskatchewan’s always a big winner when it comes to export deals,” he said. “Saskatchewan will certainly benefit from the agreement signed today, but all Canadians benefit as well. I think that’s important for us to remember.”

In a Globe and Mail opinion piece in December, Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and Erika Simpson, president of the Canadian Peace Research Association, raised the prospect that the uranium deal – then valued at $3.94 billion – would make it easier for India to divert some of its existing nuclear fuel stockpile for military use.

“India is not a routine customer,” they wrote. “It is a nuclear-armed state that has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the agreement meant to anchor global efforts against the spread of nuclear weapons. In selling it uranium, Canada appears willing to extend to India the kinds of benefits normally reserved for states that accept international inspections on all nuclear facilities and abide by NPT treaty obligations.”

With “one of the world’s largest stockpiles of civilian plutonium, separated from spent reactor fuel,” India could already produce as many as 2,686 nuclear weapons if it chose to redesignate the material for military use, Edwards and Simpson say. “Doing so would require only a political decision. The risk is not hypothetical. It sits just outside the boundaries of our public policy discussion.”

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon. This article first appeared on The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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Today, India has 461 million people living in urban centres. A proportionately staggering pace and scale of construction is underway, leaving the country vulnerable to major climatic impacts. A ballooning carbon footprint compounds matters, as globally the buildings and construction sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 37% of global emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Applying the ubiquitous “modern international style” to Indian buildings is only making the situation worse.

More than four decades ago, in an influential essay called “Form Follows Climate,” Charles Correa, a renowned Indian architect and advocate of sustainable design, wrote, “To live in the Third World is to respond to climate. We simply cannot afford to squander the kind of energy required to air condition a glass tower under a tropical sun.”

For the first 40 years of the Indian republic’s existence, its architectural language was noticeably punctuated by “climatic devices” like vertical fins/brise soleil, window overhangs (chajjas) and latticed brickwork (jalis). These broke up the intense sun into shadowed patterns, kept out the rain and ventilated buildings naturally – almost eliminating the need for air conditioning. 

However, this changed with the liberalization of the Indian economy in the early 1990s that saw multinational corporations begin to set up shop in the country. A post-colonial social pressure to be “as good as the West,” coupled with the corporate urge to unify brand image across countries, saw many Indian commercial buildings look identical to their U.S. and U.K. counterparts despite a drastically different local climate. The shift created a sense of “urban placelessness” – and made India’s tropical heat worse. 

The southern Indian city of Bengaluru (also known as Bangalore), dubbed the “garden city” and the “Silicon Valley of India,” saw IT parks mushroom, with “international style” buildings erected in heat-trapping concrete, glass and steel. Soon a sea of high-rises with glass curtain walls (and little ventilation) that could have been in New York, London or Vancouver was built, leading to a greater reliance on air conditioning. Although air conditioning cools interiors, it releases hot air and greenhouse gases into the environment, increasing temperatures both short- and long-term. Rising temperatures leads to more air conditioning use in a vicious cycle. 

Today, Bengaluru, which has a population of 14 million, has morphed from a sylvan garden city with mild temperatures into a dystopian concrete jungle, with untameable traffic, toxic foaming lakes, dire shortages of water and record-breaking heat waves. In April, Bengaluru recorded its second-hottest day in 50 years. As an X user observed, “Never in my twenty years in Bangalore, I ever thought we would need an AC.” Some air conditioning dealers reported an alarming 35% uptick in inquiries, when summer had barely begun. 

LEED buildings still heat-trapping

A second, more climate-conscious wave of corporate offices began with India’s first LEED-certified building in 2004, with a green roof, biological water-treatment ponds and solar panels. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the world’s most widely used rating system for energy-efficient and environmentally safe buildings. In 2023, India ranked third globally for the number of LEED green-certified projects built (with China in first place and Canada coming in a close second). But LEED-certified designs in India mostly use the same Western paradigms of design and heat-trapping materials with large carbon footprints.

A 2023 UNEP study revealed that climate progress in the construction sector has come from reducing operational carbon emissions – those released during the heating, cooling and lighting of buildings – with not enough of a push to address embodied carbon (emissions embedded in the whole life cycle of construction materials such as concrete). While an imminent update to LEED, called v5, promises to address this, so far it has led only to the proliferation of what architect and planner Robert Orr has called “cookie-cutter green projects that can be placed in any climate, instead of creating a green project that reflects the neighbourhood and region in which it is built.”

Local materials, cooler climate

A growing number of Indian architects are reviving indigenous techniques into designs for modern functional comfort. Architectural materials like compressed stabilized earth bricks (CSEB), rammed earth and bamboo are the new alt kids on the block.

Made with the most local of materials – excavated earth – CSEB is a compressed mud brick/adobe with added stabilizer giving it greater strength. Since CSEB is simply sun-dried, its production consumes 3.9 times less energy than kiln-fired brick. Using excavated earth for these alternative bricks is a circular method that can eliminate the production and transport of carbon-intensive fired brick, thereby drastically reducing carbon emissions. 

In Auroville, an experimental town in southern India, it is common to see two-storey load-bearing designs using CSEB with no concrete whatsoever. The use of these stabilized earthen bricks is possible in even taller buildings – such as the six-storey Symbiosis University Hospital in Pune, India – when combined with strategic supports in concrete. The best part about using mud bricks is that their high thermal mass and porosity makes internal building temperatures in the summer daytime vastly cooler. 

We simply cannot afford to squander the kind of energy required to air condition a glass tower under a tropical sun.

 

– Charles Correa, Indian architect

Though building with mud today is commonly limited to arid regions, architects like the award-winning Tallulah D’Silva, who builds rammed-earth houses in rainy Goa, argue that it can withstand tropical rainfall, too. “Goa has a history of mud building over 1,000 years, as seen . . . in the local ‘taipa’ and cob houses,” D’Silva says. Taipa is an indigenous mud technique that uses wet soil with bamboo reinforcement. Building on indigenous oral references, D’Silva experiments with various local soils and an array of unlikely, but traditionally vetted, stabilizers like cow dung, carbon-absorbing lime and slag (a by-product of the industrial production of glass). 

Bamboo has long been used in the creation of flood-resistant traditional dwellings in India’s northeast. Its incredible growth rate, low embodied carbon and high tensile strength sees it being used today across the country to design radical projects. The Bamboo Research and Training Institute in the state of Maharashtra may be the largest office building anywhere that uses bamboo as the main structural element. And like mud bricks, bamboo also has thermal properties that may in fact cool the structures it is used to build. 

The cauldron of complexity and contradiction that is India contains both some of the world’s most dire climate impacts and its most innovative solutions, many of the latter drawing from rich indigenous canons. However, even with robust building codes and technical prowess, corruption leaves India with vast unregulated, carbon-intensive construction. Yet climate optimism springs eternal. 

As D’Silva says, “In the sea of unsustainability, every drop of good practice counts. If we expose young construction professionals to the right climate-positive methods, in time they will no doubt be adopted as the first method of choice for all.”

Richa Narvekar is an independent academic and architectural designer based out of Toronto and Goa, India.

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And it’s not just the government betting big on renewable energy; the country’s two biggest corporations – Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Adani Group (AG) – and the rival billionaires who lead them have raised expectations with their renewable giga-plans.

Speaking at RIL’s annual general meeting on August 29, chairman Mukesh Ambani, now India’s second-richest man, said the oil-to-chemicals major may double its investment in clean-energy hardware manufacturing once its current plans are achieved. Last year, RIL unveiled a $10-billion plan (all figures in U.S. dollars) over the next three years to set up four factories in Jamnagar, Gujarat, to make solar panels, electrolyzers, fuel cells and batteries. This is a part of RIL’s 15-year vision to become a leading new-energy and -materials company, with plans to be net-zero by 2035.

Not to be outdone, on September 27, AG chair Gautam Adani, who recently overtook Ambani as India’s richest man and became the world’s second-wealthiest, announced at a Forbes conference in Singapore that the group plans to invest more than $100 billion in the next decade, of which 70% will be in the energy transition space.

“We are already the world’s largest solar player, and we intend to do far more,” Adani said.

The investments are big news for entrepreneurs who have made their fortunes off fossil fuels. Adani Enterprises, AG’s flagship entity, is the country’s biggest coal trader, and the RIL conglomerate owns the world’s largest oil refining hub.

Not that investing in renewables is entirely new for either billionaire. Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL), owned by AG, is already one of the largest renewables companies in India, with a current project portfolio of 20,434 megawatts – enough to power 16.7 million households. AGEL develops, builds, owns, operates and maintains utility-scale grid-connected solar- and wind-farm projects.

Adani’s foray into the green energy business began in 2015, when he announced the world’s largest solar power plant, 648 megawatts at Kamuthi, Ramanathapuram. That same year, Ambani first indicated his interest in moving into the renewable-energy space. Coinciding with India’s move to launch an International Solar Alliance, the world’s top industrialists, including Bill Gates, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Jack Ma, announced the Breakthrough Energy group, an international coalition of 28 investors formed to bring companies that have the potential to deliver affordable, reliable and carbon-free power from the research lab to the market.

We are already the world’s largest solar player, and we intend to do far more.

Gautam Adani, chair of Adani Group

It is not difficult to gauge why RIL and AG are competing to lead India’s growth in renewables. First, there has been a global shift toward renewable energy, thanks to sustained climate advocacy, forcing many oil and mining majors to enter the sector. The energy sector accounts for around 40% of India’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and the oil industry, 25%. Decarbonizing both sectors, Adani and Ambani’s bread and butter, will have to be a priority if India is to reach its goal of being net-zero by 2070.

Second, the Indian government has unveiled ambitious policies across the renewable-energy value chain, which are attractive for capital. For example, in its annual budget for 2022/2023, the Indian government outlined plans to spend an additional $2.6 billion to boost local manufacturing of solar modules to cut imports from China. In August, India committed to cutting the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030, as well as ensuring that half of its installed electricity generation capacity will be non-fossil-fuel-based by 2030.

Finally, ESG (environmental, social and governance) factors are becoming crucial for companies because of regulatory frameworks and are changing the priorities of banks, as well as institutional and retail investors. “Last year, around $1.7 trillion of ESG financing, both bonds and loans, were issued globally,” explains Shantanu Srivastava, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).  “Ambani and Adani know the trend better than anyone else.”

“RIL is an oil and gas major, and that’s its reliable source of money. But they know that the business doesn’t have too many growth triggers in the long run. AG, a relatively newer company, is looking for the next growth triggers,” says Srivastava. “Besides, listed companies would always want to let shareholders know that they are betting big on future growth. The future growth is in the renewable energy sector.”

The exciting aspect of India’s renewables story is that while these two corporate behemoths are ratcheting up investment in the sector, they are mostly eyeing different segments of the pie to achieve their climate-business goals.

Amit Kumar, senior fellow at World Resources Institute (WRI) India, explains that while both Ambani’s and Adani’s green plans include setting up giant factories for photovoltaics (PVs) and green hydrogen, Adani is also accelerating investments in the generation, distribution and transmission of renewable energy. “Both are playing to their core strengths,” Kumar says.

Still, he adds, “The ‘race’ between the two giants is important because it can bring down the costs of PVs and [green hydrogen]. It will benefit the whole world.”

Green hydrogen, black coal

RIL is not new to hydrogen. It is one of the largest producers of grey hydrogen (produced from fossil fuels) globally. However, the company wants to transition from grey to green hydrogen (produced using renewables) by 2025. Last year, RIL’s clean-energy arm, Reliance New Energy Solar, signed an agreement with Denmark-based Stiesdal to develop new technology to manufacture hydrogen electrolyzers in India, which, among other things, will reduce the price of green hydrogen to $1 per kilogram (from the current $4 to $6 per kilo) by the end of the decade.

On September 7, Adani stepped into the green hydrogen ring, announcing that the group aims to produce three million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030, compared to the earlier target of 2.5 million tonnes. (In June, French energy giant TotalEnergies bought a 25% stake in Adani New Energy for $12.5 billion to produce and commercialize green hydrogen.)

However, the two businessmen are not putting all their eggs into the green energy basket. Both are still investing heavily in their fossil fuel businesses.

At RIL’s August AGM, Ambani announced it will invest Rs 75,000 crore (one crore equals 10 million rupees, or US$9.38 billion) in the next five years in expanding the company’s oil-chemical business. According to RIL’s 2021/2022 annual report, a mere 3.12 million of the company’s 530.2 million gigajoules of energy consumption was renewable.

According to market data from CoalMint, Adani’s AG dramatically increased its coal imports last year, bringing in 1.4 million tonnes this June, up from 154,000 tonnes the previous year.

Then there is Adani’s controversial Carmichael project in Queensland, Australia. The coal reserves of more than 11 billion tonnes are enough to meet India’s entire coal needs for 12 years. Adani was initially expected to extract up to 60 million tonnes of coal per year from the mine; however, the Financial Times reports that the company, facing intense protest, has downgraded that plan to 10 million tonnes. The process of mining that coal will produce 240,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a statement from the company.

Coal currently contributes to almost 70% of India’s electricity production, though that share has been declining.

At the India Global Forum on June 30, Adani defended his investments in coal, saying that any shift away from cheaper fossil fuels “should not crush the aspirations of the thousands that lack electricity.”

A just transition?

Coal concerns aside, many in India fear that the RIL/AG-led consolidation of the renewable-energy sector may lead to a duopoly and hamper the dream of a just transition.

Then there are the potential environmental and social costs – displacement, land acquisition, disruption of biodiversity and agriculture – of such massive renewable development.

Ulka Kelkar, director of WRI India’s climate program, recently analyzed maps for all renewable-energy projects across the globe and found that most new renewable projects in India are being built over farmland and biodiversity-rich grasslands. “It is arable land. [It] may or may not be yielding much, but the fact is, India’s new renewable-energy projects are replacing agriculture land and grasslands,” she says.

Safeguards to ensure inclusive development must be put in place, says Ashwin Gambhir, a fellow at energy non-profit Prayas. “Devising a renewable-energy-specific land-use policy that encourages long-term land leasing to benefit communities can be planned.”

According to a World Economic Forum white paper, India’s decarbonization journey represents upwards of a $15-trillion opportunity by 2070, with the potential to create as many as 50 million new jobs. The first $1 trillion of this opportunity could potentially materialize with concerted action within this decade.

A recently released Mercom report said that foreign direct investment in India’s renewable-energy sector in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022/2023 saw an increase of 269% compared to the same period last year.

While this is good news, ultimately, the pace of the transition away from fossil fuels will depend on how quickly green hydrogen and renewable-energy storage costs come down. Despite the present constraints and future uncertainty, India’s renewable-energy sector is pushing ahead. And it’s not just Ambani and Adani. A legacy player, Tata Power, announced at its 103rd AGM in July that it plans to spend Rs 750 billion (US$9.5 billion) to expand the capacity of its renewable-energy business over the next five years. Then there is state-run NTPC and other robust private players such as ReNew Power and Suzlon, to name a few.

With so many ambitious players in the fray and more in the offing, India’s renewables race has truly begun.

K. Dasgupta is a journalist based in Kolkata, India. She writes about climate and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

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