Access to sustainable energy underpins many aspects of a healthy, sustainable economy. It is a child’s ability to turn on lights to study at night and connect to the internet, a family’s ability to cook indoors without inhaling smoke, and a business’s ability to operate and grow, creating jobs and opportunities.

This report examines the challenge of managing India’s renewable energy growth with increased flexibility in the system. This component specifically tries to address the dual issue of flexibility and stranded assets and looks at the plausibility of using existing coal-based power plants as flexibility reserves.

This paper—produced in collaboration between Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and funded by the Swedish Energy Agency as part of its support for the New Climate Economy project—proposes the use of municipal bonds to support the sc

IR is currently the world’s second largest railway network and is the single largest consumer of electricity in India, consuming about 18 TWh per year, or roughly 2% of the country’s total power generation. IR also consumes 2.6 billion liters of diesel annually, or 3.2% of the total diesel consumption of the transport sector in India.

Indian Railways (IR) is currently the world’s second largest railway network and is the single largest consumer of electricity in India, consuming about 18 TWh per year, or roughly 2% of the country’s total power generation.