What’s India Building?: Tales from the Biggest Transition on Earth
About this episode
The episode explores India's rapid transition towards electric freight and renewable energy, highlighting personal stories and broader societal changes.
"This will never work in India." That's what Indian truck manufacturers said about electric freight. Now they build the trucks. Something is going on here at a speed the rest of the world has not yet noticed. Solar capacity has gone from under three gigawatts to more than 160 in ten years. Across the same decade, 171 million people moved out of extreme poverty. But in eastern Delhi, a woman who has lived beside an open mountain of garbage for fifty years asks Tom Rivett-Carnac for one thing: tell the world about us. So, in the second of three episodes from India, Tom goes looking for what is really driving this change, what it looks like up close, and whether it can deliver for the people who need it most. A cement executive who set a net zero target in 2018, when nobody else in his industry had, will give you the business case that green is profitable. Ask him what is actually driving him and he gives a different answer. Truck drivers on the Bengaluru highway who can now hear well enough to talk in the cabins. A nine-year-old with a bicycle. This is the largest transition of its kind anywhere on earth, and it is happening right now. With Delhi-based journalist and filmmaker…
People in this episode
Host: Tom Rivett-Carnac
Guest: Adnan Bhat
Topics covered
- electric freight
- sustainability
- poverty reduction
- climate change
- India's transition
- renewable energy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Laneshift, The Climate Pledge
Places: India, eastern Delhi, Bengaluru
More episodes of Outrage + Optimism
- Blocker or Blueprint? India on the World Stage
- India: Life Inside Delhi's 'Airpocalypse'
- The Clock is Ticking: Forty Seconds to Explain the Climate Crisis
- Beyond Politics: Should we take the heat out of the climate crisis?
- Cheapest Energy in History. Still Heading for 3 Degrees?
- Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?
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