Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

It helps to not mince words while talking about energy demand and supply these days. On Monday, India’s power minister did just that when he warned that power demand next year will be higher. “We have challenges ahead,” he said. 

If, like me, you’ve been following the dire situation facing the European continental grid and taking comfort in the fact that India isn’t facing a cold winter or energy rationing, then both of us are mistaken. 

Anil Kakodkar, veteran nuclear energy scientist and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, says that in the long term, India’s energy grid situation looks “scarier” than what Europe faces today. Simply because “our requirements are way bigger than anybody else’s” and we don’t quite have a long-term “integrated energy policy”. 

As I’ve written before, by any calculation India will need to increase nuclear energy in its total energy mix—from just 2% of current installed capacity, or ~6,800 MW, to over 150,000 MW by 2050. Kakodkar’s back-of-the-envelope calculations show it could be as high as 50% in the net-zero scenario of 2070.