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The wars disrupting global energy markets have exposed the strategic weakness of an economy built on fossil fuels. Countries dependent on imported oil and gas can find their growth, public finances and energy supplies hostage to conflicts thousands of kilometres away. A threatened shipping route or an interruption in supplies can quickly raise the cost of transport, electricity and food. For India and much of the developing world, this is not an occasional inconvenience. It is a structural vulnerability.
The case for domestic clean energy has never been stronger. Solar and wind power do not have to pass through contested shipping routes, and once installed, they provide electricity without the recurring cost of importing fuel. Electrifying transport and industry can reduce dependence on oil and gas. The transition is no longer simply an obligation born out of the climate crisis. It is now an economic and a strategic necessity.
But there is a distinction that governments cannot afford to overlook. Energy security is not the same as a just transition. A country can reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels while creating new dependencies on critical minerals, intensifying competition for farmland and water, or leaving consumers with unreliable and unaffordable power. Developing countries face the harder task of building clean energy systems while coping with high borrowing costs, limited access to technology and far fewer financial resources than wealthy economies.
That is the choice confronting delegates at the United Nations climate summit COP31 in Türkiye. The energy crisis has made the case for moving away from fossil fuels harder to dismiss. The challenge is to turn that urgency into a transition that is cleaner, more secure and fairer.
The latest Global Carbon Budget, released on November 10, captures the contradiction. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are projected to fall by 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2 billion tonnes. Oil emissions are expected to decline by 1.9%, partly because the war in Iran has disrupted supplies and pushed up prices. Yet coal emissions are projected to rise by 0.6%, while total CO2 emissions, including those from land use change, are expected to increase to 43.3 billion tonnes, up from 42.8 billion tonnes last year.
“A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, the director of the Global Carbon Budget Office at the University of Exeter and the lead author of the report. The warning is fundamental. Higher prices and disrupted supplies can temporarily suppress fuel consumption. When markets stabilise, demand can return. A lasting decline in emissions requires countries to replace fossil fuels, not simply use less of them because they have become expensive or difficult to obtain.
Clean technologies are already changing the equation. A companion study in the Nature Climate Change journal estimates that solar, wind and electric vehicles could offset 64% to 79% of the additional emissions associated with rising energy demand through 2028. But the deployment must accelerate. The geopolitical crisis has strengthened the economic case for clean energy. It has not made the transition inevitable.
For India, the strategic case is particularly strong. The country imports about 88% of its crude oil, exposing its economy to price shocks, supply disruptions and vulnerable shipping routes. More than 93% of its primary energy supply still comes from fossil fuels, according to the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a think-tank. Reducing that dependence would strengthen the economy and advance its climate goals.
India has made substantial progress. Renewable electricity generation exceeded 500 terawatt-hours in 2025, supplying about a quarter of the country’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency’s assessment of India’s renewable energy market. It estimates that without the solar, wind and bioenergy capacity added since 2010, coal imports in 2025 would have been about 110 million tonnes higher. It also estimates that these sources reduced cumulative spending on coal and natural gas imports by more than $100 billion between 2011 and 2025. These are significant gains in energy security.
But India has reached a more difficult stage. The task is no longer to add renewable capacity. It is to make renewable energy displace fossil fuels. Solar power is abundant during the day, while cooling demand can remain high after sunset. Wind generation varies by season. Without storage, stronger transmission and a more flexible electricity system, coal will continue to fill the gaps.
The problem is already visible. Around 2.1 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity was curtailed in 2025-26 because coal plants could not reduce generation below their minimum operating levels, according to an analysis of India’s power system by Ember, an energy consultancy, published in June. Clean electricity was being wasted to keep coal plants running. “Coal’s remaining hold is after dark,” said Neshwin Rodrigues, a senior energy analyst at Ember and the author of the analysis. India needs storage and a more flexible grid to use renewable power when demand is highest. The operating requirements of its coal fleet cannot be allowed to dictate the pace of the transition.
The challenge extends well beyond electricity. Transport remains heavily dependent on petroleum, while steel and cement production rely on coal and gas. A renewable power boom cannot transform an economy that continues to consume fossil fuels across these sectors. India must electrify road transport and industrial processes, improve energy efficiency and develop cleaner alternatives where direct electrification is difficult. Progress must be measured by how much fossil fuel the economy stops using.
The latest emissions projections underline the gap. India’s fossil fuel CO2 emissions are expected to rise 4.4% in 2026, with coal emissions up 5.9%, according to the Global Carbon Budget. Renewable generation is growing, but demand and industrial activity are also expanding. India will not secure its energy future by adding clean power alone. It must change the way its economy consumes energy.
India’s ethanol blending programme illustrates how the pursuit of energy security can create new vulnerabilities. By August 2025, blending ethanol with petrol had saved more than ₹1.44 trillion in foreign exchange and substituted about 24.5 million metric tonnes of crude oil, according to the Economic Survey 2025-26. These savings matter for a country heavily dependent on imported oil. But the programme has also increased demand for agricultural feedstocks, bringing energy policy into competition with other uses of land, water and crops.
Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, maize accounted for 20% of ethanol feedstock supplied. Damaged food grains and rice from the Food Corporation of India accounted for 11% and 8%, respectively. In comparison, sugarcane-related feedstocks made up the remaining 62%, according to PRS Legislative Research, a think-tank.
The Economic Survey notes that administered ethanol prices, alongside improvements in maize cultivation, are reshaping farm incentives and could affect crop diversity and food security. A maize dashboard on Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) prepared by Crisil, a research and analytics firm, also points to rising diversion of maize towards ethanol production.
The implications go beyond the farm price of maize. The crop is used for animal feed and other agricultural purposes. Sugarcane, rice and maize require substantial water, often in regions where supplies are already under pressure. Directing more land and water towards fuel production can narrow farmers’ choices and intensify competition for scarce resources.
“The costs of blending go beyond just the procurement of inputs from farmers and their processing,” said Karthik Ganesan, a fellow at CEEW. The full cost includes public support for agriculture and distilleries, water use and the opportunity cost of land that could grow other crops. Anasuya Gangopadhyay, a research scientist at the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, a think-tank, said, “food insecurity is not an immediate threat.” But she warned that continuing current cultivation patterns could increase risks over time.
The climate benefit of ethanol also depends on how it is produced. Fertiliser, irrigation, processing and land-use changes affect the emissions saved by replacing petrol. A 2026 study in PLOS One, which uses land use modelling, identifies trade-offs between biofuel production, land, nitrogen emissions and food security under different feedstock scenarios. Domestic production alone does not make a fuel sustainable.
For developing countries, the greater obstacle is often the cost of building the infrastructure needed to make clean energy reliable. Solar and wind projects require transmission networks, storage and stronger distribution systems. Industry and transport need investment to move away from fossil fuels. India has access to domestic capital, but high borrowing costs and financially stressed electricity distribution companies raise project risk and expense. Poorer economies face even steeper barriers.
This is where the international response has fallen short. Developing countries are being asked to reduce emissions and strengthen energy security while paying more for capital and often relying on imported technology.
At the UN summits, India has emphasised predictable climate finance and countries’ right to determine their own transition pathways. The negotiations in Türkiye must turn these demands into practical support.
The geopolitical crisis has given governments a powerful reason to move away from fossil fuels. Countries that build domestic clean energy systems will be better placed to withstand supply disruptions, reduce exposure to volatile prices and tackle climate change.
The Türkiye climate summit, which is set to conclude on November 20, is expected to make the path to a just energy transition easier. World leaders at Summit have urged governments to keep climate action a priority, amid the ongoing geopolitical conflicts.
 
Banner image: Workers at a solar panel manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Jaipur, Rajasthan. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
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