Watch the event video from “Sun, Wind, and Biomass: India’s Path to a Sustainable Future,” a Harvard Climate Action Week book talk with Prof. Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at Harvard University, and Prem Shankar Jha, Former Visiting Fellow, Harvard-China Project; author and journalist. Co-sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment and the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.
Key Highlights:
- India, the world’s most populous country, is a major source of CO₂ and methane emissions, making its energy transition central to addressing global climate change.
- The book, Sun, Wind, and Biomass: India’s Path to a Sustainable Future, written by Prof. Michael B. McElroy and Prem Shankar Jha, highlights India’s vast potential for wind and solar energy, enough to replace fossil fuels, but notes challenges around variability, storage, and infrastructure needs. Large-scale renewable deployment also raises land use and equity concerns, especially for impoverished rural communities with shrinking landholdings.
- The book explores using hydrogen produced from renewables to support industry and provide energy storage.
- Biomass and waste-to-energy offer additional opportunities, from agricultural residues and municipal waste to byproducts from paper and sugar industries. India produces about a billion tons of crop residues annually, enough to ensure 24/7 electricity if used locally, while byproducts like biochar and silica add further economic value.
- Village-based plants could generate millions of jobs, enable cold storage to boost farmer incomes, and reduce migration pressures by creating opportunities where people live.
- These solutions not only support India’s energy transition but also address urgent social challenges like unemployment, poverty, and farmer suicides—offering lessons for other developing regions.
- Any climate strategy for India must integrate social and economic realities alongside technological solutions.
Key Quotes:
“In a large community such as India, there’s a large production of municipal waste. How do you dispose of that municipal waste? Often that municipal waste is burned, or it’s dumped. Why not use the organic carbon content of that to produce useful products? India has a large paper industry. The paper industry produces pollution compounds that, again, are a problem for pollution of water systems. Why not use that to produce useful products? India has one of the world’s largest sugar industries. Along the way, you produce bagasse. And instead of burning the bagasse, why not convert it?” —Michael B. McElroy
“The bulk of [India’s unemployed under age 30] are concentrated in the villages. They’ve become a huge migrant population, which is surviving on one or two days of work per week that they managed to get in the labor market in the cities. … The best part of the biomass gasification project is that the projects will have to be located in the villages themselves …. [generating] about 20 jobs – permanent jobs, direct and indirect employment included, for 12 months of the year at wage rates which are low for the cities but which will be a boon in the villages because they will come on top of what they already have. … This is cash income, which can do all kinds of things, including, most important of all, providing the backing for education for their children.”
—Prem Shankar Jha
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subjects and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its steering committee.