BENGALURU, India (AP) — India Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the midst of a monthslong reelection campaign this April when he took to social media to trumpet a “remarkable feat!” and a “historic milestone” for his country: crossing 1 billion metric tons of coal and lignite production. It was proof, Modi said, of India's “commitment to ensuring a vibrant coal sector.”
A month later, for the third year in a row, his government ordered some coal plants to run at full capacity to meet high electricity demand during the increasingly hot summer months.
Even though India has been significantly increasing its renewable energy capacity in recent years, when demand for electricity surges, it still goes back to its most trusted source of power: coal.
For the first six months of this year, India has responded to major energy demand from its growing population and greater cooling needs because of extreme heat, in part due to climate change, by relying on its coal-fired plants. The country also plans to add more coal plants.
India's coal demand rose nearly 10% in 2023, or about 105 million metric tons, in the biggest jump by percentage for any country, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand in China rose 6%.
“We know the Indian government is serious about its climate commitments,” said Carlos Fernández Alvarez, the lead author of the IEA report. But he acknowledged the “huge need to ensure people have electricity” in India, and added: “We don’t believe that India will be a front runner in the coal transition."
More than 70% of India’s electricity needs are still met by coal even though renewable energy such as wind and solar power is growing.
India last year became the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people. Electricity demand is projected to grow by at least 6% annually for the next few years, according to the IEA.
India has millions of people mired in poverty, but millions more who are being lifted from poverty as the country's economy develops. And many of those will be able to afford some relief.
“Even if someone gets a fan or an air cooler to make their life a little more comfortable, cumulatively you will see the need for a lot more electricity," said Charith Konda, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. He said 7% growth in annual demand “is the bare minimum” he expects.
While renewables are growing, India needs to add a lot of battery storage so that power can replace coal for nighttime needs, Konda said.
Electricity demand isn't the only force guaranteeing coal's durability in India. Konda pointed to millions of jobs in coal, including allied sectors such as the railways that control the trains used for transporting coal. One indicator of coal's heft: At the height of summer in 2022, the government canceled nearly 2,000 passenger trains so coal freight trains could reach power plants faster.
India grew its renewable energy capacity by 25 times over the past decade, and now has 195 gigawatts of wind and solar power installed.
But it needs to grow faster still. Peak electricity demand reached an all-time high of 250 gigawatts in May, according to a report by the India Energy and Climate Center at the University of California, Berkeley. That demand could go past 300 gigawatts in the next three years, according to the report, which said that would mean power shortages at night.
The country has set an ambitious clean energy goal of 500 gigawatts by the end of this decade.
“In 2015-16, we saw a few years of really good growth of renewable power. Since then, it’s kind of plateaued,” said Ashish Fernandes of the think tank Climate Risk Horizons.
Fernandes and other experts say India needs to install at least 50 to 60 gigawatts of clean power each year to meet growing demand. In the last two years, due to a mix of policy decisions, politics and supply chain issue s, less than 15 gigawatts of wind and solar have been installed annually.
And storage has to be integrated into the system, said Konda, the energy analyst. India has a little less than 4 gigawatts of storage. The government last year announced a $452 million plan to support companies installing more.
“Battery storage is becoming so cheap and is a growth sector globally,” said Fernandes, who said India needs to invest while prices are low.
The Indian government has also said developed nations should provide more support, including money and technological support, to India and other Global South nations working toward a clean energy transition.
In Dipka, a coal town in central India that has seen nearly a century of mining, life without coal is hard to fathom.
“In this region, everything is connected to coal,” said Ramadhar Yadav, 45, whose family was among villagers in the region who sold their fertile land decades ago to coal mining companies and is now among several hundred residents pressing for jobs in the industry in a legal dispute.
"At least for the next 20 years our region and maybe India as a whole will depend on coal, I’m sure of it,” he said.
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FILE - A woman works at a coal depot in Ahmedabad, India, May 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will begin deploying as many as 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border in the coming days, U.S. officials said Wednesday, putting in motion plans President Donald Trump laid out in executive orders shortly after he took office to crack down on immigration.
Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to sign the deployment orders on Wednesday, but it wasn't yet clear which troops or units will go, and the total could fluctuate. It remains to be seen if they will end up doing law enforcement, which would put American troops in a dramatically different role for the first time in decades.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not yet been made.
The active duty forces would join the roughly 2,500 U.S. National Guard and Reserve forces already there. There are currently no active duty troops working along the border.
The troops are expected to be used to support border patrol agents, with logistics, transportation and construction of barriers. They have done similar duties in the past, when both Trump and former President Joe Biden sent active duty troops to the border.
Troops are prohibited by law from doing law enforcement duties under the Posse Comitatus Act, but that may change. Trump has directed through executive order that the incoming secretary of defense and incoming homeland security chief report back within 90 days if they think an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act should be invoked. That would allow those troops to be used in civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil.
The last time the act was invoked was in 1992 during rioting in Los Angeles in protest of the acquittal of four police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
The widely expected deployment, coming in Trump’s first week in office, was an early step in his long-touted plan to expand the use of the military along the border. In one of his first orders on Monday, Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration.”
On Tuesday, just as Trump fired the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, the service announced it was surging more cutter ships, aircraft and personnel to the “Gulf of America” — a nod to the president’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump said during his inaugural address on Monday that “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came.”
Military personnel have been sent to the border almost continuously since the 1990s to help address migration. drug trafficking and transnational crime.
In executive orders signed Monday, Trump suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services.”
In his first term, Trump ordered active duty troops to the border in response to a caravan of migrants slowly making its way through Mexico toward the United States in 2018. More than 7,000 active duty troops were sent to Texas, Arizona and California, including military police, an assault helicopter battalion, various communications, medical and headquarters units, combat engineers, planners and public affairs units.
At the time, the Pentagon was adamant that active duty troops would not do law enforcement. So they spent much of their time transporting border patrol agents to and along the border, helping them erect additional vehicle barriers and fencing along the border, assisting them with communications and providing some security for border agent camps.
The military also provided border patrol agents with medical care, pre-packaged meals and temporary housing.
It's also not yet clear if the Trump administration will order the military to use bases to house detained migrants.
Bases previously have been used for that purpose, and after the 2021 fall of Kabul to the Taliban, they were used to host thousands of Afghan evacuees. The facilities struggled to support the influx.
In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, to prepare to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children, but the additional space ultimately wasn’t needed and Goodfellow was determined not to have the infrastructure necessary to support the surge.
In March 2021, the Biden administration greenlighted using property at Fort Bliss, Texas, for a detention facility to provide beds for up to 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children as border crossings increased from Mexico.
The facility, operated by DHS, was quickly overrun, with far too few case managers for the thousands of children that arrived, exposure to extreme weather and dust and unsanitary conditions, a 2022 inspector general report found.
Construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Members of the Mexican National Guard patrol as construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Volunteers talk in a tent along a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Dogs are near a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)