By Shayak Sengupta, Medha Prasanna and Peter Jarka-Sellers
In 2021, the United States (US) and India renewed their commitment to shared energy and climate priorities in the US–India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership which has set the tone for cooperation in recent years. The Agenda 2030 Partnership builds on nearly two decades of cooperation between the US and India on energy and climate issues. To understand the factors driving India’s engagement with the US in this current and previous initiatives, this brief uses joint statements from the American and Indian governments to trace the achievements of US–India energy and climate cooperation across multiple US presidential administrations. It finds that the factors driving India’s engagement with the US are largely oriented towards the areas of development, technology, and commercial affairs in the energy sector. The Agenda 2030 Partnership continues these themes. Such bilateral engagement has advanced technological and commercial ties that support India’s energy transition, but this partnership fails to clearly articulate how its numerous activities connect with each other and to India’s ambitious 2030 goals regarding its nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. Moreover, engagement with the US under the Agenda 2030 Partnership has failed to yield appreciable finance or investment for India’s energy transition. Despite these limitations, energy and climate remain a high priority for the bilateral relationship, on par with topics such as defence and security. We recommend that India (i) clearly determines how the multitude of technical assistance achievements under the Agenda 2030 Partnership advance the needs of India’s energy transition and (ii) emphasizes bilateral cooperation in clean energy with the US in more explicit commercial, trade, and financial terms beyond technology and development.
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This brief is part of an edited volume Tracks to Transition: India's Global Climate Strategy published by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, New Delhi