Watch: How are India’s fossil fuel industries attempting to decarbonise?

How are India’s fossil fuel industries attempting to decarbonise? A discussion on India Energy Week 2025

| Video Credit:
The Hindu

Between February 11 and 14, India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, or MoPNG, organised its third edition of what the government dubbed as one of the world’s largest gatherings of energy sector corporates, experts, policymakers and bureaucrats.

The government’s broadcaster DD News called India Energy Week, or IEW – a platform for industry leaders, policymakers, and innovators to discuss and collaborate on the future of energy, focusing on sustainability, energy security, and the transition to cleaner energy sources.

Oddly, the presence of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, or MNRE, which oversees the development of non-fossil fuel-based energy nationwide, was conspicuous by its absence.

According to the International Energy Agency, or the IEA, power and heat production emitted the most amount of carbon into the atmosphere making up more than half – 53% to be precise – of all carbon emissions nationwide, making the energy sector the top contributor to climate change. This data mirrors global statistics. 40% of global carbon emissions is from producing electricity and heating.

MoPNG said that the India Energy Week attracted over 70,000 visitors, 600 exhibitors, and featured ten international pavilions and that discussions spanned nine dedicated themes, highlighting innovations and policy dialogues shaping the global energy landscape.

Indeed, some experts have argued that renewables must also be stewarded by dee-pocketed legacy fossil-fuel based firms such as the oil marketing companies worldwide – as they could invest in scaling production and drive product innovations.

This is true of India too: One of the country’s flagship public sector undertaking – the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC): established ONGC Green In February 2024. This subsidiary will drive ONGC’s RE initiatives, targeting areas like biofuels, green hydrogen, and carbon capture. The company aims to achieve 10 GW of RE capacity by 2040, aligning with its decarbonization roadmap.

To discuss this shift to renewables by the fossil fuel based sector and to get a better sense of what transpired at this year’s India Energy week, we earlier spoke to Prasanto Roy, an specialist in the energy sector, who runs a consulting firm and who is also a member of the India Hydrogen Alliance. Prasanto was a journalist for two decades before that, tracking trends in the energy and allied sector.

Presentation: Kunal Shankar

Editing: Aniket Singh Chauhan

Videography: Ramanan AV