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open access report Executive summary: Key findings • There is limited focus on just transitions in the transport sector: in both academic literature and policy to date, technical solutions have received policy and research priority, but there is limited focus on how end-users will be affected by transport transitions, and whether these transitions will be equitable, inclusive and just. Several factors should be addressed under this: ensuring that transitions lead to affordable mobility solutions for all users is a key point, as is ensuring that job losses from high-carbon mobility services are compensated for by job creation in low-carbon mobility. From our key informant interviews, policymakers are focused on the supply-side when considering transport transitions, contrasting with users’ concerns of demand-side support and downstream services, particularly for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. These tensions need to be addressed in policy. • There is potential for significant socio-economic impacts from the transition: this research has investigated the potential pains and gains of the transition to electric mobility, particularly electric road transport, in the Indian transport sector. There is potential for job losses both in the downstream oil sector and the downstream mobility services sector as the EV transition progresses due to reduced petroleum product consumption and a lesser burden of maintenance for electric vehicles compared to ICE vehicles. This also has the potential to impact government revenues from fuel taxation and place a higher burden on the government purse from increased electricity subsidy outlay. • Just transition alternatives exist: from the scenarios presented in this research, it is clear the current policy trend does not foreground justice and equity in the low-carbon transport transition, and this will lead to significant negative impacts for disadvantaged sectors of society. Policy alternatives exist to foreground justice in the transport transition, including participatory co-development of policy with end-users, and engendering greater coordination between transport and energy sectors and within the transport sector to ensure users are targeted equally across socio-economic strata with low-carbon mobility solutions.

The institutional arrangements for supplying water to people living in urban conurbations in India is gradually being transformed from a conventional departmental arrangement to a new, rather fragmented structure of public-private partnerships with regulatory set-ups in few cases. This article tracks the course of this development. It also identifies the prevailing patterns of public-private institutional settings that exist in specific urban areas. The study uses a comparative framework to identify the transition that occurred in the management structure of the states/cities over a specific period. The results suggest that despite efforts made to introduce private elements to operate water-supply systems in most of the urban conglomerations in India, the effects have actually been minimal, confined only to the top end of the supply chain, viz. operation and management (O & M). Instead, the old structure continues to be the dominant arrangement., Asien, Nr. 117 (2010): ASIEN (Oktober)

Offshore wind energy holds promising potential as an alternative source of energy for a country like India, which continues to be land deprived and faces increasing difficulty in acquiring land for energy. While some scholarly efforts have focused on the Indian context, there is a dearth of studies on the associated environmental and social challenges of such infrastructure deployment. The paper conducts a detailed assessment of the policy and institutional mechanisms governing the offshore wind energy in the country and identifies the possible environmental and social impacts of such projects on the marine environment and livelihood of fishing communities in India. It employs qualitative research approaches and various types of secondary information and data. The policy and institutional framework assessment reveals that, despite the creation of the required mechanism, significant gaps exist in the knowledge of such projects' possible impacts through these policies and regulations. Impact mapping shows that offshore wind projects could adversely affect the marine eco-system and marine biodiversity to varying degrees over their entire life. The impacts occurring during the construction and operation phases of the project cycle will be significant. Policy suggestions show that preparatory measures are necessary before the implementation of such projects.

ESG investments have attracted wider attention from both investors and customers worldwide. These investments largely follow a triple-bottom-line approach that combines financial returns with environmental and social norms. The study in this context carries out a detailed assessment of the ESG development and evolution trajectory in India, maps the legal and regulatory landscape governing ESG investments, and conducts a sustainability evaluation of a set of corporate entities. It uses a mixed-method approach for its assessment. The findings suggest that ESG integrated assets have outperformed their counterparts. In addition, it emerges from the analysis that companies have performed relatively better in policy disclosure and governance parameters of ESG integration than in environmental and social factors. The mapping of ESG policies and regulations reveals that there has been a gradual widening of scope of ESG policies and that the ESG policy environment is moving away from a voluntary regime to a mandatory one. Finally, the sustainability assessment of a select set of corporate entities indicates that, in terms of both ambitions and practices, they place disproportionate emphasis on environmental aspects of sustainability and neglect social dimensions, both in their declarations and in their implementations.

Rooftop solar (RTS) photovoltaic (PV) interventions are an attractive and promising energy ventures for developers, entrepreneurs, financial institutions, consumers, and electricity distribution utilities in India. These RTS systems are currently experiencing sluggish growth due to multiple technical, policy and regulatory, and financial hurdles encountered by them. The present study focuses on two crucial aspects of RTS development in India: it comprehensively maps and measures policy strengths at the sub-national scale, and it critically and comparatively examines the prevailing business models for RTS systems based on their characteristics and key features. A combination of theoretical arguments, empirical observations, and logical reasoning is employed to construct a composite index for measuring policy strengths, and literature review and expert solicitation surveys are carried out to assess the business models and their characteristics. Analysis of policy strengths indicates that while states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, and Telangana are ahead in terms of policies, states such as West Bengal, Tripura, Punjab, Uttarakhand, and other parts of northern India, emerge as having poorly designed state RTS policies. Assessment of business models and their risks reveals that consumers bear a significant proportion of risks in the CAPEX model compared to the OPEX model.

To sustain the high economic growth trajectory of India, it is imperative that an adequate supply of energy is maintained over a long period of time. One such major initiative is the thrust laid on energy efficiency interventions as a low-hanging option for meeting the overarching energy and climate goals of the country. This paper focuses on analyzing market-based approaches for energy efficiency interventions, with a specific focus on the Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme. Policies governing energy efficiency interventions reveal that policies have evolved over three different phases characterized by a gradual transition from a regulatory regime to a market-based arrangement. Analysis of the PAT scheme points to the fact that while the scheme is designed in a dynamic manner and has huge energy-saving potential, a lack of clarity at the policy level and operational anomalies could generate dampening effects on future energy efficiency investments. Policy streamlining becomes imperative for successful implementation of this scheme.

There was an expectation that the independent regulatory institutions that India created for its electricity sector would drive the sector along a sustainable trajectory. However, there has been a dearth of empirical studies analyzing the effect of electricity sector regulation on sustainable sector outcomes. The paper in this context empirically examines whether electricity sector regulation influences the sectoral outcomes at the state level. For analytical purposes, the present study considers a sample of 12 Indian states (provinces). While it captures electricity sector regulation by constructing a composite index that it connotes as a "regulatory index," it applies a sustainable development framework that it operationalizes through an indicator-based approach to measure the sectoral outcomes. Finally, it employs the panel data estimation technique with a fixed-effect model to establish the relationship between regulation and sectoral outcomes. The results suggest that, while regulation is a crucial determinant of sectoral outcomes in the economic and environmental dimensions, social sector outcomes experience a negative impact. These results have clear policy implications for larger overarching policy questions of energy security and the sustainable development of the sector.

India's energy sector is experiencing a transition with increasing penetration of renewable energy in the energy mix. One of the major impediments in the process of such a transition is to secure the necessary finance to achieve the transformative goal of producing 175 gigawatts of renewables by 2022. The problem gets compounded with limited budgetary resources available, conjugated with difficulties associated with mobilizing private capital for the sector. With this backdrop, the present paper offers a granular understanding of the associated challenges of mobilizing such finances, drawing from the Indian perspective. It contributes to the present understanding by identifying the emerging pathways of financing renewables and the inherent challenges. The findings are quite revealing. Financing of renewable energy in India continues to face multiple conundrums, largely entrenched with the nature of current financial market in India in general, such as short tenure of loans, high capital costs, and lack of adequate debt financing etc., as well as with the sector specific issues of the renewable energy sector. The success of introducing innovative financing mechanisms and instruments requires necessary conditions to prevail.