How Climate Proof are Indian States? | ft. Abinash Mohanty

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to the season five of the India Energy Hour podcast. This podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India energy transition through an in depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements and science. Your hosts for this episode are Shreya Jai, Delhi based energy and climate journalist and Dr. Sandeep Pai, energy transition researcher and author. The show is produced by 101 reporters, a pan India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. If you like our podcast, please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or the platform where you listen to our podcast. Your support will help us reach a larger audience.

As climate risks intensify across India, state governments are emerging as critical drivers of climate action, adaptation, and energy transition. In this episode of The India Energy Hour, we explore how states can plan, finance, and implement climate action on the ground. While several state-specific models are in the works, New Delhi–based IPE Global recently unveiled a one-stop Climate Readiness Index for states. This index, which relies on tech-based tools and modelling, aims to provide authoritative guidance to states for building their climate action plans.

In this episode, we speak with Abinash Mohanty, Global Sector Head – Climate Change and Sustainability at IPE Global, to understand why such an index is needed, which states face the most urgent risks, and how sub-national plans shape India’s net-zero pathway. Mohanty has nearly two decades of experience working across government, development finance, and policy research.

[Podcast interview]

Shreya Jai: Hello and welcome to the India Energy Hour, Abhanash. Thank you so much for joining us here today. We have been talking for a long now, reading your reports for several years, looking at some fantastic work that you are doing in this phase of energy transition, and also now climate action. Your role is very varied at IPE Global. So, very glad that you could join us here today and talk about some of the fantastic work that you are doing.

Abinash Mohanty: Thank you, Shreya. And yes, The India Energy Hour is a podcast that I have been referring to for a quite long time now. So, glad to be here. Thank you.

Shreya Jai: Very happy to know that. And thank you so much. It is guests like you who make this podcast what it is. So, thanks again for joining us here. And let’s just begin, delve into the conversation. We have a very interesting conversation lined up. We’ll be talking about some very interesting tool that you have designed here at IPE Global along with your colleagues. But before we do that, I want our audience to know a bit about yourself. You know, where are you from? What did you study? And, you know, did you choose to enter into the space of climate and energy or did it happen accidentally? Just tell us about your professional journey, please.

Abinash Mohanty: Awesome. Well, that’s going to take an hour and an episode of India Energy Hour if I start speaking about my thirst with climate action, especially with India and its energy, especially India and its climate actions. I’m a trend engineer. I am. I hail from Odisha, especially, and from Bhubaneshwar. My other trend engineer, I have been working in this space. As any engineer works in, they never know until they finish up their engineering what they have to do in their life. Right. So by the time I completed my engineering, I got the opportunity to kind of work through my professional journey on the affordable housing policy of India. I was one of the advisors with the Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Poverty Elevation. And that’s where my taste with the environment and climate change came in. Because affordable housing was a very new thing that was picking up. This is almost 18-20 years back, 17-18 years back when all of these work started. And for two years, there was an affordable housing pilot scheme that had to be implemented because everyone was talking affordable housing as a charity that has to be done. It’s not a profit making. And we were the class who were advocating that we need to have a profitable model. Then only the tier two, tier three cities can actually come in in terms of affordable housing and the kind of horizontal and vertical growth. Urban sprawling is happening. We need to have that. And that’s where the case study come in. There was a loan which was approved by the National Housing Bank. And unfortunately, that loan couldn’t be dispersed because National Housing Bank never had a chairman. And then the political game changed. But by the time this whole journey went out, I was like, and we were advocating for clean green technologies within the National Affordable Housing Policy in that time. And that this pushed me to have some sort of an official degree around environment, ecology, climate change, so on and so forth. That’s where I started my thesis and my journey. And I went for a master’s, master’s in research in ecology and environment studies. It was a very fancy master’s degree because, master’s in research degree, because it went across to have each semester in different countries. And that gave me a toteside view of how climate change and environment is more about that. And accidentally, I started doing climate modeling because I wanted to learn modeling. And by the time I started learning about climate modeling, there was less which was been spoken about attributional sciences. So I got into the attributional sciences, my new passion. I picked it up. That’s where the story began in terms of understanding if there is a climate change happening, how is going to impact you, Shreya, me, my parents, my communities, my country, my states, my district, my villages, so on and so forth. And that’s where the sectoral came in. And now our thesis at IP Global, so professional story I have been panning across. I have been part of many institutions being created in India. And that’s where I came back to India and have been working around this space. So that’s how the journey has been. I won’t say it has been an easy journey. But yes, this journey has been a very, very sporadic, has been very thrillful. And more importantly, the journey where India is shaping the global narrative. Glad that we are able to contribute and make all of us the Global South’s voice.

Shreya Jai: Well, that’s great to know. And somehow your journey has been in sync with some of the stuff that is happening at the national level in the areas that you function. And your areas are pretty varied. So, you know, at IP Global currently, what exactly are some of the themes that you’re currently working on, which you think are of utmost importance or should be talked about more in this whole space?

Abinash Mohanty: At IP Global, we are working across 13 countries. We have got offices across them, 27-year-old organization. And within that 27-year-old organization, climate change sustainability is one of the very younger practices, I would say. It’s like I keep having fun about it. It’s the start of story in a 27-year-old organization. That’s where I started establishing this global practice on climate change and sustainability. We are working in a layman’s term. We are working on three major thematic issues. One is on climate risk and adaptation, where we are trying to understand how the attributional climate risk can actually shape the narrative for becoming climate proofing into the, or bringing climate proof agenda into the mainstream. Whether it is climate proofing of lives, whether it is climate proofing of livelihood, economy-based infrastructure, so on, so forth. That’s one part. And as part of that, we, I mean, a lot of work has been done in terms of publishing good reports in my past assignments. But my idea was, if we are publishing these reports, where does it end into? Is there any action coming in? And that question kind of made me very disturbed. And my journey started in IP in terms of shaping these reports into tools. And those tools which are people-centric, tools which are decision-maker-centric, tools that can tell the story more importantly by themselves. You don’t need experts. You don’t need climate journalists. You don’t need climate communicators to tell you what is the narrative. Because that’s where the this between climate science and the public policy need to be bridged. That bridging was the core mantra in terms of establishing. So I started in terms of conceptualizing climate risk observatory as one of the first of its kind tool. And while at IPE Global and with my colleagues, we had the capacity to model all of them. But if you want to really visualize them into a hyper-granular level, you need a lot of data and information. And if I start churning those data and information, probably you need a lot of money in terms of doing that. And second, you need a lot of time. And that’s where we partnered with ESRI. ESRI has been the global leader in geospatial technologies. And we used a partnership. And great to have that partnership because web demodeling, the assessment, and everything come down from us. They have been great partners on board to tell that story more in form of maps, in terms of visualization. And that’s where the user cases came in. Now, once this tool was developed, what do we do with this tool? We need to test them. So we tried testing it by developing the first of its kind, or rather the first multi-hazard risk catalyst in the city of Mumbai. And that multi-hazard risk catalyst is now getting integrated into the command and control center of BMC. Because Mumbai is the financial capital. Nobody can deny what all climate risks are kind of hanging around Mumbai. And what implications is it going to be? And that’s where the whole concept of hyper-granular climate vulnerability and risk assessment translating into action from a disaster response. And more importantly, from a kind of real action at the community level is going to happen started with that. Now, everybody asked us that question. Okay, Mumbai had a lot of data because of the financial capital. But does your tool work in a place where you don’t have a lot of data? That’s where we scaled this work into Ghana, where you literally don’t have data and information. And you have to rely on satellite images, proxy data as information, a lot of hyper-granular modeling in terms of combining models together to make that story in developing the urban risk observatory in Ghana. And then the question came in, if this is working for all of these hazards, is it going to be more hazard centric? And that’s where Patna model heat action plan, Nagaland for departmental disaster management plans, so on, so forth are the line of work that we have been doing. And then comes the second part about the famous, infamous low carbon pathways. A lot has been spoken about low carbon pathways. A lot of modeling has happened to navigate that India has to become net zero by 2070. But the real action for net zero begins at states and further at those districts and cities. Now, how do you bring those high fund up modeling into state and decision making on the net zero? That’s where we said this cannot be a climate question. This has to be a public policy question. That’s where we broke the low carbon pathway or India’s net zero running into three pillars, system, technology and finance. And that gave kind of birth to climate readiness index. And the hypothesis is very plain and simple. If India has to become net zero by 2070, then it’s stopped and emitting states need to be systemically ready, financially ready, sorry, technologically ready and hence financially ready. All of these states need not need to be systemically ready or rather they are not. Then you just focus on systems, getting the house into order. Then some of these states like Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, some of these states who are very good with their policies and action plans, they might not have the right technology to be brought in or they might need some innovative finance. So that’s where the segregation made the whole journey of 2070 being calibrated into a state agenda. And, yeah, that’s how the tool that we launched on Climate Readiness Index is actually part of the larger climate readiness of top 10 emitting states, more from a system, technology and finance point of view.

Shreya Jai: Thank you for the broad overview. And as you were mentioning that, you know, it’s better to set an example than someone tell you what to do. And I think tools such as these are very important when you want to tell a story, as you mentioned. And I believe that climate journalists and climate communicators, as you mentioned, can tell a better story, can provide better solutions with the help of such tools. On that note, let’s let’s start with the story of this Climate Readiness Index. If you were to tell me what is the story that CRI, the Climate Readiness Index, wants to tell for some of these India’s most polluting or most highly emitting states, then what would it be? And then let’s go into the solutions that it is trying to provide. But let’s just first understand, you know, you did tell us how what to its birth, but what are you trying to aim with it? And what kind of, you know, tools or, you know, power that you’re providing to the states with this particular index?

Abinash Mohanty: The story of climate action always has been pessimistic. So Climate Readiness Index is one of those bright poll stars, I would say, which says that one way of looking at these states is what you rightly said, polluting or emitting. But they are polluting or emitting because they have got a developmental trajectory attached to them, their growth narrative. And if states are thriving, because states need to thrive, if India has to thrive, India has to become that five trillion economy, it needs to address the trinity of jobs, growth and sustainability. All of those fancy taglines that we have been using within the domain needs to be done. Now, in order to do that, what’s more important is the states are trying to push their population, their sectors, primary, secondary and tertiary sectors to live frog. Now, if you are live frogging, there would be carbon emissions which should be happening. What you rightly said about the states that these are the top 10 emitting states. But CRI looks at the whole climate action and the low carbon transition more from a positive lens. And the positive narrative is the top 10 emitting states are also the biggest contributor to India’s growth story. Now, if the states are striving forward, leapfrogging in terms of creating the developmental agenda for the nation, that is where it is also becoming carbon intensive. Now, in order to not withheld the larger growth narrative, how these states can actually plan their primary, secondary and tertiary sectors to be largely decarbonized, number one. And once they are decarbonized, are they going to address the question of how many jobs are going to be created? Or rather, how many green jobs are going to be created? What is the growth narrative that has been filled in? And third and most important is, what is the sustainability quotient are we trying to address through some of these questions? That’s what CRI tells you, that while you are planning your developmental and growth trajectories, it is important to understand that states can also plan low carbon transitions, which is affordable, accessible and available. And when I say available, accessible and affordable, I mean it for all the three pillars of Climate Readiness Index, that is systems, systems, policies, are they available? Or schemes or action plans, are they available? If they are available, are they accessible for the larger decarbonization trajectories? And more importantly, is this policy an affordable one? Or are we relying on tons and debt money, which is going to come down from bilateral, multilateral banks or from various countries? Is it Atmanirvara in that real case? Now, second is, whatever are the technologies, because a lot has been debated and we are just in the closing times of COP30, which is very important to understand that India’s larger narrative in the last 10 years has been about making India Atmanirvara. Now, if India is Atmanirvara, we can’t rely on the technology which is coming down from the global north. That’s a global south story where India has to pave with its huge startup ecosystem to be addressing the larger decarbonizing issues in order to answer what is the right kind of technology. Now, third and most important is, if all of these pillars are to be looked in, do we have enough money? Is it only public money? Is it only private money? Or is it a blending of public, private plus philanthropic and the other kind of sources that are available in order to address this journey? Now, that’s where CRI tells you a powerful story of which states are systemically ready. And if some states are systemically ready, are they also technologically and financially ready? Or vice versa, or a combination of any one of them. So, it’s more about a combination that tells. And third is, in the climate domain, as we have discussed quite a lot of time, what do we bring onto the table and IP global and I am personally committed into the larger cause that all of these fancy models and outputs have been looking at a 2050-2100 scenario. What we really need to navigate is a 2-year, 5-year, 10-year timescale. Whether it is climate risk, whether it is the low-carbon transition, all of them need to be clubbed into that timeframe. Because at the end of the day, your government is made for 5 years. So, your tools, climate science, need to address to that 2-year, 5-year, 10-year timescale rather than taking it forward into a 50-year, 100-year timescale.

Shreya Jai: Very interesting to hear that climate science needs to be politically aligned as well. And you’ve just come from COP and we were talking about it, that how important it is that political mindset needs to align with climate science and actions and solutions that are on the ground. And I believe this index is trying to find that. Let me now talk a bit about actual infra-creation and what kind of projects would this index push. Financial viability is one thing. Technical prowess is another. The third, obviously, and most importantly would be, what kind of solutions would it actually provide or would suggest to states in India, which are very varied, each having their own different demands, each have their own different demography to cater with. And given the kind of aggressive economic growth that we are seeing in not just the traditional industrial states, but other states that are also coming on the fore. So what kind of plans or what kind of solutions does the index take into account when providing solutions on the infrastructure front?

Abinash Mohanty: It starts with energy. And it starts with energy infrastructure largely, because if India has to become net zero, and currently, as we speak, we are still dependent almost 50% around the power of capacity, which is non-fossil fuel. So fossil fuel dependency is still there, and nobody can deny it. Whatever we say, we still need fossil fuels to be there. Now, CRI tells you a powerful story in terms of if still 70, roughly around 70 to 74% of electricity is still being generated in India by fossil fuels, and roughly 30% is still being generated from the non-fossil fuel sources, then we need to step it up. And that’s where you, what we need is, can we make our solar energy the cheapest mode? We have traveled quite a long journey in terms of that, and our dependency on some of these foreign or neighboring or rather global, not technologies have been quite good. And there is a domestic push. That’s where the question comes down, that when there is a domestic push, PM Surya Ghar, Yojana, or some of these flagship initiatives are actually leading in terms of making non-fossil fuel energy A, available, B, accessible, and three, affordable. When I say affordable, I don’t mean by how much of affordability is going to come down for the energy from industry sector. Is it the domestic? Because India still relies on its domestic market. Now, there are famous trivial anecdotes. If you remember, when there are recessions coming down globally, India is always recession-proof because of its domestic market. And the same recession mantra actually goes down in terms of understanding that India’s energy trajectory need to be recession-proof, need to be independent, or Atmanirbhar in that way, where it becomes the cheapest mode. That’s point number one. Second is, what are the sectors are we looking at? We are sitting down in Delhi, coming from the lungs capital of the world, from the Amazon forest in Brazil, Belém, to Delhi, where your AQIs have been hitting all the, and breaking all the records, right? Then, comes down your sectors. Your sectors, like infrastructure building, housing sector, your transportation sector, all of these sectors, if they have to be decarbonized, you need affordable cheap flips happening. The day you have electric vehicles without subsidies, and yet they are affordable, that’s the day you have hit your Eureka moment in terms of the whole energy transition plan. Until then, if you are still dependent on some of the subsidies, incentives, then some way or the other, we are still having that push. So, there is a demand and supply mismatch. We are trying to create a demand, whereas, the supply isn’t there, or that demand is not naturally there. You need to make it free flow. And that’s where these are very important in terms of CRI to tell you that boss, and the second phase of CRI work is largely into these sectors. If the states have, whether they have become system, technology, and financially ready, then which are the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors which are ready and to what extent they are ready. And that’s where the real game begins because you are going to bring in a lot of private sector to push in in terms of how much of climate tech can actually solve the India energy question, can solve the India energy poverty question, and third and more important is if the India energy question is completely aligned with the India’s development question, then we really need to make the energy sector Atmanirbhar.

Shreya Jai: Right. But this brings me to a very basic question, but I’ll pose that to you. You know, you explain how important subnational plants are in the whole scheme of things. But if you look at the history of subnational plants, be it across energy or heat action or air quality and variety of such issues, the needle has moved not much when states themselves have been active in this or have been told to be active. In a lot of sectors, especially energy, this country follows a federal structure and whatever growth is specifically in the clean energy segment has happened has, because of, you know, the plants and ambitions of the center which were, you know, imposed on states or states were asked to, you know, be part of it, etc. But there have been very few states and very, you know, few examples where states themselves have taken a lead in terms of drafting their own plans in terms of climate action and energy transition. So, do you think that this is how it should be or do you think that the time has come that states should be more proactive in their own plans?

Abinash Mohanty: Okay, let’s, before answering this question, I’ll take a step back. What has made the states not to do it? When, it’s not that the bureaucrats, the politicians sitting down at the subnational level don’t understand this. They very well understand. But is there a market viability question coming down onto it? And clearly, that market viability question is not there. Or rather, if I have to say, there are two ways of looking at it. First way of, we are still, there are states that we are talking about are still grappling with basic health infrastructure, education infrastructure or infrastructure health services, education services, so on, so forth, right? So, these existential questions have been still political mandate questions, which we are addressing, number one. Number two is, now state, how does a state functionary or a state functions, basically? They have got an elected government who has to deliver on some of the promises that have been made. If those promises, those developmental agendas have been in a different tangent, and the larger climate action has been in a different tangent, then both of them can’t combine together. Now, that’s where the problem has been. We have never tried looking at climate proofing our developmental tragedy, and that’s where we have missed the first. Second is, we have always thought of environment to be the villain or the big elephant in the room, because if they have to be environmentally sustainable, it comes with cost. And that cost will be either from some of your priority thematic budget heads. And that’s where the real problem comes in. The movement will start looking at if there is a temperature rise, hence there is an increase in vector bond business, hence there is an increase in your OPD and IPD cost of the health budget. That’s where the health sector, climate proofing of the health sector will start. Second is, now, let me also break this down. I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and some of the other Southeast Asian countries. I’ll draw two parallel analogies here. One is about Bihar. In Bihar state, if you travel more and more towards the interior parts where you don’t have sustained electricity, you will see even a chota kiriyane ki dukan or a grocery store to have a solar panel on top of it. That one bulb will be their existential light or electricity provider. Now, if you travel across Laos, if you travel across Cambodia, the same kind of parallels can be drawn where you see the only difference is in India, you find a lot of now the solar lanterns to be India-made. In Laos, Cambodia, you find their China-made. But, if you look at the cost of both of them as an alternative, you will still find both of them are almost at par. Rather, Indian solar lanterns are higher on cost than the Chinese. And that’s where the question comes in that if we do not have electricity. In India, we have cheap internets, but we don’t have cheap electricity still. and that’s where the question comes down that you need to address your developmental trajectories more from a climate lens rather than looking climate as a different sector. you really need to embed and blend climate actions into some of these larger developmental agendas and that will help us in terms of pushing it. And some of the states have begun doing it and have been doing very fast about this. Let me cite some of the examples from Orisha, my home state. Now, Orissa was the first state to update their state action plan on climate change, to have a state action plan on climate change financial budget. All of these shows the proactiveness in terms of where they are going forward in terms of mainstreaming climate action. And again, a lot of us within the climate domain, and you also started this discussion saying me that my work varies across adaptation, mitigation. It’s high time. We can’t be looking at adaptation from a different lens, mitigation from a different lens. Both of them need to go together. And that’s what is very, very important because again, the analogy from Orissa, they are most climate vulnerable, but they are the best disaster risk reduction or disaster management in terms of disaster management, they are the best. And in terms of climate action policies, they are also the best. Right? At least within the national framework of all of the mandates that are available now, Odissa has been doing that. Gujarat has been steering this conversation for a longer time. Andhra Pradesh has been steering this conversation for a longer time as well. Now comes question of Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand. These kind of states really are kind of taking very snail’s speed. Now there is a question about why they are taking a snail’s speed because all of these states have been fundamentally dependent on fossil fuel energy. Now this fossil fuel energy which is required for the developmental trajectory is required in terms of taking the conversation of the development trajectory. Can anyone deny that a state or a district or a village which do not have electricity can grow faster? No. Right? So energy security, energy from energy security to making energy really people-centric is the real developmental question. And if your energies are there, that also helps you building a lot of capabilities. I’ll cite another example from Bihar. In Bihar, if floods come down and you have got emergency operations going on in your hospitals, solars are going to come into your rescue. It’s not your grid lines coming down. Right? So that’s where your resilience index is also increasing if you have got a higher kind of renewable energy index or renewable energy adoption index, which is one of the sub-layer within the larger CRI, how much of adoptability, affordability is there within these states. So a real action comes down because all of us are pondering in terms of mainstreaming climate action. But climate action needs to be embedded, blended within the larger development. And these states which are doing it fastly are going faster. And that’s the number. And the states which are not doing it fastly are kind of need to, are kind of laggards in this whole conversation. And they need to step it up. And that’s the whole story. Probably by having this conversation with you, I could spark out two or three more research questions that our team should address now in terms of GDP, energy, resilience, and combining this whole framework. That’s the next thing we should start looking at.

Shreya Jai: Yes, definitely. And I’ll surely look forward to some of this work. And thank you for explaining this. It was definitely enlightening that you know how states need to come to fore. And we are seeing a lot of examples on how states are doing their own planning and they need to step up as you said. But thank you so much for talking with us on that. And let’s hope that a lot of your work goes into this sub-national approach because it is the need of the are. You know, states need investment. A state needs, you know, private money to come in. The states need better plans so that there is climate action so that they can plan for energy transition better. And these are not just minor states like Odisha, Chattisgarh. These are other states as well, UP, Bihar, everyone who is climate vulnerable at this point. Thank you so much for talking with us on this very important topic. And we look forward to what more you do on that area.

Abinash Mohanty: Thank you so much, Shreya. And looking forward to having more conversations about how the developmental trajectory coincides with the larger India energy question and more importantly, India’s resilience question. Resilient Atmanirbar India or Bharat is going to be an energy independent India as well. Or energy secure India.

Shreya Jai: Thank you. That’s a fantastic headline. But thank you again. Thank you so much and we’ll close the conversation.                   

[Podcast outro]

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