Paper short abstract:

The paper illustrates the role of International Climate Finance (ICF) in shaping the just energy transition discourse in India with its co-benefits approach and forming political coalitions along the way.

Paper long abstract:

India’s energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents a unique paradox: A booming renewable energy market and massive revenue loss from phasing down fossil fuel reserves. The informal nature of India’s fossil fuel sector with millions employed to date and coal accounting for almost 40 percent of the energy mix demands the transition to be ‘Just’ which will cost trillions of dollars. Within this narrative, the role of ‘International Climate Finance (ICF)’ holds particular importance. The research on ICF so far has been skewed to its inadequacy along the lines of the North-South divide. This paper illustrates the flip side of the coin and tests ICF from a point of retrospection where the hits and misses so far towards a just energy transition in India are accounted. This is carried out by creating a quasi-database of 1900 ICF projects constituting the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) from the period 2000 to the present. The analysis entails the spatial distribution of these projects and the extent to which these projects have capacity-building initiatives in particular to rural skill training programs and job creation opportunities in the fossil fuel regions of the country. This is then investigated to identify ‘political coalitions’ along the way, that are key in the just transition discourse in India.