Standing by vast, ash-colored coalfields, miner Rabi Behera expressed few doubts about the job at hand. To cope with increasingly brutal temperatures, India has to keep its power grid standing— and for now that means digging up ever expanding quantities of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
So far, this year has been less blistering than 2022, when temperatures in New Delhi climbed past 49C (120F), but February still broke records, April saw lethal conditions and forecasters issued warnings for this month, when pre-monsoon heat tends to peak. Extreme temperatures are increasingly frequent, and that’s driving electricity consumption surges, which in turn push up demand for fuel from vast pits like Gevra’s in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, where Behera works — soon to become the largest coal mine in the world.
As a result, India is now the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, even if it still lags China and the US, and per-capita figures remain below the global average. A vast, climate-vulnerable nation is making its own predicament worse, leaving hundreds of millions of its workers caught in a vicious heat cycle — with all the health and economic productivity costs that come with toiling in sweltering conditions. A 2020 McKinsey Global Institute report estimated that as of 2017, heat-exposed work contributed to about half of India’s gross domestic product, and a third of GDP growth.
“Heat is not foreign to most countries in South and Southeast Asia. However, at present level of global warming, it is just going beyond the survivability limit,” said Fahad Saeed, an Islamabad-based scientist with Climate Analytics. “The heat is incredibly serious and points to the need for us to reduce emissions as fast and as hard as we can.”
He helps dig coal for state-owned Coal India Ltd, one of the largest producers globally. He said he sees the benefit of strong demand and his family enjoys the appliances electricity can power. He is also among those risking the worst of the consequences, laboring daily in a black, shade-free moonscape. Unlike truck drivers who can take refuge in air-conditioned vehicles, Behera, a supervisor, spends his days outside, in a region where temperatures have topped 49C.
Temperatures always spike before the monsoon hits around June. But blistering, life-threatening levels like those reached in 2022, and tested again this year, are becoming more common. A changing climate has made extreme heat 30 times more likely in India.
In the eastern state of Odisha, dairy farmer Manoj Kumar Behera described falling milk output as even mixed breeds among his 25 cows and calves struggle to tolerate the heat. With intermittent electricity supply, he has few options but to deal with the losses.
The impact is far wider, though, threatening overall productivity, long-term health and even survival, as hundreds of millions are exposed to extreme conditions — a greater proportion of the population than anywhere else globally. Heat may lower the quality of life for almost 600 million Indians by 2100.
“I received comments, including from doctors, saying Indians have their own way of coping with heat wave, so, it’s not a very big problem,” he said. “The notion that Indians are more resilient to heat than people elsewhere is misinformation.”
But heat waves are not explicitly among the disasters eligible for relief under the National and State Disaster Response Funds, and a study of state- and city-level heat action plans by the Centre for Policy Research think tank found significant gaps.
Meanwhile, official definitions of heat waves still focus only on temperature thresholds — not on impact of high humidity or the link to smog. “Heat waves can intensify air pollution and that’s simple physics: pollutants won’t be able to escape because of the heat,” said Ronita Bardhan, an architectural engineer at the University of Cambridge who researches sustainability and also worked on the heat study.
But there are also pressures to meet targets. In the Talcher coalfields in Odisha, run by a unit of Coal India, a local government directive means outside work should stop in the middle of the day, to prevent heatstroke. But work in the opencast mines rarely does, according to workers who asked not to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media. Some coal mine officials said they simply do what ever it takes to meet production targets.
The trouble is that India’s power demand is growing. Green development, climate finance and sustainability have been a priority for its Group of 20 presidency this year, but coal will remain a major part of India’s power sector in the coming decades. The Central Electricity Authority estimates it will account for 54% of generation in 2030, and the country is still building coal-fired plants.
The opportunity should appeal as multilateral lenders and even wealthy nations and capital markets push cash towards the energy transition. BloombergNEF calculates that India will need $12.7 trillion in supply and demand-side investment to become net zero by 2050. The country targets to reach net zero by 2070.
Today, with the monsoon still days from making landfall further south, the news is good mostly for air-conditioner sellers like Vishnu Moorarka, sitting in his electronics shop in Bilaspur, a city on the Chhattisgarh plain, about two-hour drive from the Gevra mine. He has been anticipating the start of nautapa in late May, a nine-day period in the Hindu calendar that’s traditionally held to be the hottest of the season.
After a long day at the Gevra mine, supervisor Behera is less optimistic. “It’s getting hotter than earlier. Trees are being cut, industries and mines are coming up,” he said, at home with his two children. “It will only rise from here.”
–With assistance from Sreeja Biswas and Spe Chen.
Standing by vast, ash-colored coalfields, miner Rabi Behera expressed few doubts about the job at hand. To cope with increasingly brutal temperatures, India has to keep its power grid standing— and for now that means digging up ever expanding quantities of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
So far, this year has been less blistering than 2022, when temperatures in New Delhi climbed past 49C (120F), but February still broke records, April saw lethal conditions and forecasters issued warnings for this month, when pre-monsoon heat tends to peak. Extreme temperatures are increasingly frequent, and that’s driving electricity consumption surges, which in turn push up demand for fuel from vast pits like Gevra’s in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, where Behera works — soon to become the largest coal mine in the world.
As a result, India is now the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, even if it still lags China and the US, and per-capita figures remain below the global average. A vast, climate-vulnerable nation is making its own predicament worse, leaving hundreds of millions of its workers caught in a vicious heat cycle — with all the health and economic productivity costs that come with toiling in sweltering conditions. A 2020 McKinsey Global Institute report estimated that as of 2017, heat-exposed work contributed to about half of India’s gross domestic product, and a third of GDP growth.
“Heat is not foreign to most countries in South and Southeast Asia. However, at present level of global warming, it is just going beyond the survivability limit,” said Fahad Saeed, an Islamabad-based scientist with Climate Analytics. “The heat is incredibly serious and points to the need for us to reduce emissions as fast and as hard as we can.”
He helps dig coal for state-owned Coal India Ltd, one of the largest producers globally. He said he sees the benefit of strong demand and his family enjoys the appliances electricity can power. He is also among those risking the worst of the consequences, laboring daily in a black, shade-free moonscape. Unlike truck drivers who can take refuge in air-conditioned vehicles, Behera, a supervisor, spends his days outside, in a region where temperatures have topped 49C.
Temperatures always spike before the monsoon hits around June. But blistering, life-threatening levels like those reached in 2022, and tested again this year, are becoming more common. A changing climate has made extreme heat 30 times more likely in India.
In the eastern state of Odisha, dairy farmer Manoj Kumar Behera described falling milk output as even mixed breeds among his 25 cows and calves struggle to tolerate the heat. With intermittent electricity supply, he has few options but to deal with the losses.
The impact is far wider, though, threatening overall productivity, long-term health and even survival, as hundreds of millions are exposed to extreme conditions — a greater proportion of the population than anywhere else globally. Heat may lower the quality of life for almost 600 million Indians by 2100.
“I received comments, including from doctors, saying Indians have their own way of coping with heat wave, so, it’s not a very big problem,” he said. “The notion that Indians are more resilient to heat than people elsewhere is misinformation.”
But heat waves are not explicitly among the disasters eligible for relief under the National and State Disaster Response Funds, and a study of state- and city-level heat action plans by the Centre for Policy Research think tank found significant gaps.
Meanwhile, official definitions of heat waves still focus only on temperature thresholds — not on impact of high humidity or the link to smog. “Heat waves can intensify air pollution and that’s simple physics: pollutants won’t be able to escape because of the heat,” said Ronita Bardhan, an architectural engineer at the University of Cambridge who researches sustainability and also worked on the heat study.
But there are also pressures to meet targets. In the Talcher coalfields in Odisha, run by a unit of Coal India, a local government directive means outside work should stop in the middle of the day, to prevent heatstroke. But work in the opencast mines rarely does, according to workers who asked not to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media. Some coal mine officials said they simply do what ever it takes to meet production targets.
The trouble is that India’s power demand is growing. Green development, climate finance and sustainability have been a priority for its Group of 20 presidency this year, but coal will remain a major part of India’s power sector in the coming decades. The Central Electricity Authority estimates it will account for 54% of generation in 2030, and the country is still building coal-fired plants.
The opportunity should appeal as multilateral lenders and even wealthy nations and capital markets push cash towards the energy transition. BloombergNEF calculates that India will need $12.7 trillion in supply and demand-side investment to become net zero by 2050. The country targets to reach net zero by 2070.
Today, with the monsoon still days from making landfall further south, the news is good mostly for air-conditioner sellers like Vishnu Moorarka, sitting in his electronics shop in Bilaspur, a city on the Chhattisgarh plain, about two-hour drive from the Gevra mine. He has been anticipating the start of nautapa in late May, a nine-day period in the Hindu calendar that’s traditionally held to be the hottest of the season.
After a long day at the Gevra mine, supervisor Behera is less optimistic. “It’s getting hotter than earlier. Trees are being cut, industries and mines are coming up,” he said, at home with his two children. “It will only rise from here.”
–With assistance from Sreeja Biswas and Spe Chen.