‘Clean energy is the order of the day.’ Describe briefly India’s changing policy towards climate change in various international fora in the context of geopolitics.

India's climate diplomacy has travelled from a defensive insistence on equity to agenda-setting leadership, with clean energy as its calling card.

From resistance to target-setting

• In the Rio–Kyoto era, India anchored itself in Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), resisting binding emission cuts for developing countries.
• Copenhagen (2009) saw the first voluntary pledge on emissions intensity of GDP; Paris (2015) brought ambitious NDCs, including 40% non-fossil power capacity.
• At Glasgow COP26 (2021), India announced the Panchamrit — 500 GW non-fossil capacity and 50% energy requirements from renewables by 2030, and net zero by 2070 — formalised in the updated NDC (2022).

From rule-taker to institution-builder

• India co-founded the International Solar Alliance (with France), the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, LeadIT (with Sweden), the Green Grids Initiative–OSOWOG, the Global Biofuels Alliance (2023), and launched Mission LiFE for sustainable lifestyles.

The geopolitical context

• Energy security after the Ukraine war underpinned India's insistence on 'phase-down', not 'phase-out', of coal at Glasgow, protecting its development space.
• India voices the Global South — pressing the unmet USD 100 billion climate finance pledge, an ambitious New Collective Quantified Goal on finance, technology transfer on fair terms, and the Loss and Damage Fund operationalised at COP27.
• It opposes the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as green protectionism, even as climate cooperation deepens its partnerships with the US, EU and the Quad.
• India's G20 presidency (2023) delivered the Green Development Pact and pushed reform of multilateral development banks for climate finance.

India now couples ambition at home — among the world's fastest-growing renewable energy markets — with hard bargaining abroad, wielding clean energy as both a development strategy and a geopolitical instrument — a bridge between developed economies and the developing world in the climate order taking shape.