Transcript by Kensho.

Lindsey Hall: I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, a podcast hosted by S&P Global, where we explore environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping investor activity and company strategy.

Esther Whieldon: When it comes to climate change, we often hear how the private sector cannot solve all of the problems on its own. Rather, addressing climate change will require an all-hands-on-deck approach with action needed by individuals, business, finance and even governments. And the role of countries in setting the climate agenda is also sure to be a big topic at Climate Week NYC in New York in September and at COP28 the UN’s big climate summit in Dubai in November and December.

Lindsey Hall: One country that will be squarely in the spotlight is India. Earlier this year, India became the world's most populous nation. And as we'll hear in today's episode, it will have to balance a number of competing priorities on its energy transition journey, providing access to affordable, reliable energy to its people, while mitigating the impacts of climate change. And at the same time, India will play a major role internationally for the world to reach net-zero emission goals.

Esther Whieldon: That's right. India is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions annually, and its energy consumption has been growing as well. And as we'll hear today, India is already experiencing some big impacts from climate change, ranging from droughts and heat waves to flooding.

To understand the challenges and opportunities India faces in transitioning to a low-carbon economy, we’ll be speaking to Dr. Atul Arya. He's Co-Chair of the S&P Global Research Council and Chief Energy Strategist at S&P Global Commodity Insights, Atul led publication of a new S&P Global report titled, “Look Forward: India's Moment”. And he'll be talking to us about India's energy transition in particular.

We'll include a link to that report in our show notes in case you want to read more. We'll also be learning about India's physical climate risks and adaptation needs from Suruchi Bhadwal. She's Director of Earth Science and Climate Change at The Energy and Resources Institute, or TERI.

TERI is based in India, and it's a research institute focused on energy, environment and sustainable development, primarily in India. TERI's activities range from policy, advisory and consultancy work to helping scale up technological solutions. Suruchi was also one of the authors of a chapter of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that focused on key physical climate risks across sectors and regions.

Lindsey Hall: Now before we turn to those interviews, let's do a quick run-through of some of the terms we'll be hearing today. First up is G20. The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum of 19 countries plus the European Union that meets regularly to discuss international cooperation on economic policies. Notably for this episode, India currently holds the G20 presidency.

Relatedly, you'll hear the OECD mentioned, and that stands for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is a multilateral organization with 38 member countries that work together to promote economic growth, prosperity and sustainable development.

Esther Whieldon: Listeners will also hear our guests mention 2 climate-related terms: mitigation and adaptation. Generally speaking, mitigation refers to actions that aim to reduce or prevent the flow of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

And I can also refer to processes where nature or technologies absorb emissions from the atmosphere and then store them. Adaptation on the other hand, involves taking steps to prevent or minimize the adverse impacts of climate change such as extreme weather events, for example.

Another climate term that we hear often on this podcast is net-zero. In general, net-zero refers to when a company country or some other entity aims to reduce emissions to as close to zero as possible, and then uses permanent carbon removal and storage to counterbalance any residual emissions that cannot be eliminated.

Scientists have said the world needs to reach a net-zero emissions by around 2050 to have any hope of limiting global warming to around 1.5 degree Celsius — that's relative to preindustrial levels.

Lindsey Hall: Two energy-related terms you'll hear are green hydrogen and LNG. Green hydrogen is created using renewable generation to power electrolysis that separates out the hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules. LNG refers to liquefied natural gas, which is natural gas that's been cooled to a liquid state for storage or transportation.

Esther Whieldon: Okay. Now with all of that explained, let's turn to my interview with Atul, who starts off by describing his role in the company and some details about the Look Forward report that S&P Global recently published.

Atul Arya: My name is Atul Arya. I'm Chief Energy Strategist in the Commodity Insights division of S&P Global. In my role, I look after the research and content creation across the entire spectrum of energy and climate-related activities our division does. I work a lot with private sector companies and also with governments around the world, particularly advising companies on their energy transition strategy.

Esther Whieldon: Great. Thank you. So as we're setting the scene for this episode, S&P Global just released a Look Forward report all about India. Can you tell our listeners about that report and a little of the key findings?

Atul Arya: Surely. So Look Forward, in general, this is something we started in the Research Council at the beginning of this year. This is our third Look Forward report, and we called it Look Forward: India's Moment.

So the prior 2 reports, was first one was around just A World in Disruption at the beginning of the year, and the second one was around Private Markets. This one is pretty unique. It's sort of a deep dive into India, and one may ask why India?

One of the main drivers for us doing it was as many of the audience will know India is currently the Chair of G20. And of course, there is a lot going on in terms of transition of India in multiple dimensions so we thought it was a good opportunity to dig deeper into India in many different aspects of India's economy, policies across the various industries and provide our ideas as S&P Global's view around the future of India.

So the report covers as I said, a wide spectrum and the things we were particularly interested in is India is of course, driving its own economic growth, but also bringing along the global economy given the size of this economy. We focus on that. India has a very big demographic dividend. It became the most populous country in the world just a few months back. We focus on that and, of course, climate and energy and sustainability are front and center.

The thing which is very interesting about India is that India is going to double its energy demand by 2050. Double. And just as a metric, India's per capita energy consumption today is one-tenth that of the U.S. We don't think India should follow the U.S. in terms of getting to the same level because I think that will not be very sustainable, but still, the economic growth has to be underpinned by more energy. And we hope that more energy will be less emissions intensive.

And just as a headline, India will continue to consume all kinds of energy: oil, gas, coal and renewables in vast quantities. And every one of those commodities is going to see a growth over the next 20-plus years before we see a plateauing of the demand for any of those commodities.

Esther Whieldon: What are India's current climate targets? And has it laid out any particular agenda for its energy transition as it's going through this basically expansion of its economy?

Atul Arya: Yes. So India has the big target, which many in the audience will know is net-zero by 2070. So the way we look at the world, OECD, most of the countries have a 2050 target. China has a 2060 target, and India has a 2070 target to get to net-zero.

But before that, it has a number of other additional targets. I would highlight 2 which are pretty important. One is the sort of the energy-intensity target. One of the things India is trying to do is to reduce the energy intensity of this economy as you grow, consume more energy but make it much more efficient or lower energy consumption power unit of GDP growth.

And India is doing at quite well, mainly because it still had a lot of low-hanging fruit to act late and use and get to that target. 

The second big target I should mention is the deployment of renewable solar and wind. And it has currently a target of 500 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind installed capacity by 2030, which we think is a very ambitious target. It was 450 GW increased to 500 GW now. And if India can deliver on that, that would be a huge win both in terms of deployment of renewable clean energy, but also it’ll help with emissions. So those are some big, big targets in the short term.

Esther Whieldon: Can you give our listeners a sense of what does 500 GW of installed wind and solar mean compared to other areas or the market, in general?

Atul Arya: If you follow any kind of trajectory of solar and wind renewables deployment. China, of course, leads the pack. The U.S. is next after China and India is currently third after U.S. and China. And the 500 GW, just sort of my memory, I think maybe 40% of the installed capacity, it is able to achieve that. So that's a huge increase. And the interesting thing is India started a bit slower than, say, China has in terms of deploying of renewables, and it has really picked up the speed.

There are a couple of challenges, and we outlined them. One is most of the solar and wind hardware is not made in India. So they want to build more of that in India to develop the local industry as well as to reduce reliance on imports mostly coming from China.

The other issue in India is availability of land. It's a very populated country and therefore, getting land solar, in particular, is land-intensive. And that's creating challenges. And connection to the grid is the third big challenge they're going to face. But the good news is, it's moving forward, both public sector and private sector are both working to deploy as much as solar and wind as possible.

Esther Whieldon: In the report, you mentioned it would be unrealistic to rapidly reduce coal's share of the fuel mix, why is that?

Atul Arya: Yes, that's a really great question. Coal, I'll just be very clear for our audience, I'm sure you know that coal is the dominant source of power and actually the largest source of overall energy in India. One big reason is because India has a large endowment of coal, and it's domestic, it's the most cost-competitive source and also its secure. And the reason it's going to be difficult to transition out from coal to other sources, one would say, well, lets do more natural gas, that's the lower emission, but the challenge is India has very little of its own gas resources. So it has to import LNG primarily from Middle East and then now, from the U.S. as well. But that LNG is now very expensive.

And one thing we know about India, in general, is that Indian consumers are extremely price-sensitive. So coal being domestic is much cheaper and therefore replacing it with LNG is not happening, not in the power sector. Gas is being used more for things like city gas for cooking and heating and for industrial use for fertilizers. So that's one issue. 

The second issue is that we need to think about coal in the kind of overall ecosystem of coal. It's not just let's stop coal and use something else or have a lot more renewables, coal mining, coal transportation, coal use. There are millions of people who are employed in that industry. And that you can't just turn the switch off, you have to find ways to deal with that employment. Just as an example, Indian Railways, they get the highest revenue for transporting coal and that revenue subsidizes fare prices for passengers. So if you were to completely shut down coal transportation, fare prices for ordinary people will increase, and that's politically a sensitive issue, quite difficult to do. So I think it's going to take a transition.

The last thing I should say is that there is just energy transition partnership, global partnership, which is trying to eliminate coal from the power mix in South Africa, in Indonesia and Vietnam. India is next on the list.

I think it's going to be quite challenging. And one of the things, what I see from the policymakers in India is they're looking for alternatives, which are realistic. So if you want to get India to have more gas use, then that gas has to be somehow be price- or cost-competitive in the Indian market.

As I said, it's complicated. I think over time, India will start to eliminate coal, but we don't see it following the same trajectory as I say, other countries well or perhaps as many in the OECD want India to. This, by the way, is going to be a very big topic to bid at the COP meeting coming up in Dubai at the end of this year.

Esther Whieldon: Yes. So 2 things I'd like to drill into a tiny bit there, which is the Just Energy Transition Partnership. I'm not familiar with that. Can you briefly describe that?

Atul Arya: This came about in Glasgow, initially in the COP meeting in Glasgow 2 years back. And the idea was that the Western countries, it was initiated, I think, by Germany, but all the Western countries are going to give money to countries which are highly dependent on coal.

And the #1 country even higher share of energy mix than India is South Africa. So starting with South Africa. The South Africa got close $19.5 billion or something around that number. Very big amount of money to do a systemic change out of coal into other sources.

And I know it is going to be natural gas and renewables in the case for South Africa, but that has proven to be, for the reasons I just cited, difficult. And after that, the next big deal was made with Indonesia, which was at G20 last year which Indonesia was the host of G20 and then following that in Vietnam.

So there are a number of countries who are in that kind of sphere large consumers have coal who the goal is to reduce their use of coal. Without eliminating coal significantly, there is, of course, no way for us to get to net-zero globally.

Esther Whieldon: What are some of the alternative technology options that India would like to explore or is exploring?

Atul Arya: Renewables is the most because coal is going into 2 areas in India. One is for power generation that release for steel manufacturing. And for power, clearly doing more renewables is the number one priority. Actually, energy efficiency, which will seem to give a second priority will be highlighted in the journal that focus on energy efficiency because that's good for all seasons. So I think that's going to be one thing, more renewables.

One new one, which is quite exciting for India is hydrogen and green hydrogen. I think it's going to take some work, but the idea is given it has set abundant, solar is a very inexpensive solar resource. Can we take the solar resource and use that to manufacture green hydrogen and perhaps some of that green hydrogen can be exported and some can be used to decarbonize say, the steel industry, which is using a lot of coal.

So I think that's the path ultimately, they will have to take. And natural gas will go into some applications, some power generation, but also into other areas, more what we call premium sectors like fertilizers, where a cleaner source like natural gas will be better and also help reduce emissions.

Esther Whieldon: I think you've laid out a lot of the big challenges, but are there any other big challenges India faces in the energy transition that we haven't touched on?

Atul Arya: Well, as with any country, and India is a large country and also a very diverse country both geographically and politically, it has a system similar in a way to the United States with a strong federal government and state governments.

And one of the things we highlight in our report is that not just in our paper, but in energy, but more broadly, that a better coordination of policy will help India because right now, there are many voices. So there is no single say, a Ministry of Energy in India, like we have here in the U.S. or in many of the Western countries. There is a different coal ministry and oil and gas ministry and the renewables. Sorry, there are multiple ministries involved in decision-making, environment is a separate ministry.

So I think all of those need to come together to help with policymaking and also policymaking between federal government and the state governments. Electricity sector is run primarily by the state government. They have to think about how to coordinate that. That's a very big challenge. 

The other thing I should mention is the question of money. So this kind of transition and this kind of growth requires billions of dollars and India has been looking for more money, both grant money as well as loans. And as we know, the cost of borrowing is much higher in the developing countries. And again, that's going to be a big topic of discussion leading up to the COP meeting as to how do developing countries access money?

There's a lot of money in the U.S., for example, we have too much money and not enough projects in the clean energy space but can some of that money flow into India and other developing countries, that's another big issue and a big challenge, attracting that money for investment.

The last thing I should mention is coal, as we said earlier, are going to remain a big part, but cleaning that coal, improving the use of that coal with more supercritical thermal stations and also carbon capture and sequestration, which many Indian companies are starting to get into this another big opportunity for that. Pretty much e ery technology we are thinking about in OECD, India is also thinking about many of those.

Esther Whieldon: Atul mentioned another low-carbon strategy India is taking to reduce ground transportation emissions. And this involves 2- and 3-wheeler vehicles that are part of the busy traffic life of many Indian cities. Here's Atul.

Atul Arya: The other thing I should mention is around mobility, again, highlighted in our paper is there's many opportunities for India to electrify. India has a very large 2- and 3-wheeler mobility. That actually consumes more than 2/3 of actual patrol, which goes into the market is consumed by the 2- and 3-wheelers.

So if you could electrify those 2- and 3-wheelers and get that electricity more and more from renewables, that will be another big win. There is already a big focus on deploying enhancing manufacturing of batteries for those 2, 3 wheelers.

And one of the really interesting innovative schemes they are trying to deploy at scale is this battery changing thing. So you go to a service station, not to fill your 2-wheeler, but to swap your battery electric 3-wheeler. You give your consumed battery to the station and they give you a fully charged battery. And that kind of new innovative business model really underpinned by IT technology, will be another big opportunity for them.

Esther Whieldon: And then the policy and finance levers component, what options does India have there?

Atul Arya: So finance-wise, India is actually in a relatively strong position because India has a fairly decent balance sheet. It's a growing economy. Many investors, public and private want to invest in India.

I think the challenge is getting high-quality projects on board. The issue of land is a big, big challenge because most of the land is privately-owned and therefore, negotiating to access land becomes a big issue if you're trying to build a large renewables project. So that will be something which we hope Indian government will help address.

And then multilateral banks and now with the World Bank taking a lead in terms of climate financing, our view is that between now and the COP meeting is a very big meeting of the bankers, IMF, World Bank and so on in October in Maracas.

And we feel that at that meeting, there will be much discussion about how to create more financing, both debt and equity financing into countries like India and also reducing the cost of borrowing, which is sort of very high for historical risk perception and now the level of risks at least in India is much lower than many other countries, so therefore, the cost of borrowing needs to come down. Unfortunately, the challenge today in the current macro environment is that the interest rates are very high and that impacts everything, not just energy.

Esther Whieldon: Do you think India is current trajectory or that sort of this goal is in-line with where it needs to go to keep its promises under the Paris Accord?

Atul Arya: Yes. It's really a very important issue in my view. So I think the way at least we think about it in Commodity Insights and how we're thinking about in this report is that any path to a global net-zero has to travel via India, right, given its overall emissions.

The rest of the world gets to net-zero and India doesn't, we'll never win, that's going to be a hollow of victory. So how do we make India be part of that equation? I think Indian government realizes it. And there is a flip side to it also, which is we have a separate article in the paper around the sustainability issues.

India is at the forefront of climate change. They are seeing a lot of extreme heat. They are seeing floods. They're seeing monsoons, which are either very weak or very strong. Like this year has been a very strong monsoon with a lot of flooding. So they see the impact of climate change, and that is going to incentivize India to play its part. I think the challenge is with the level of poverty and the economic growth, how do you kind of walk and chew gum at the same time, as they say.

Esther Whieldon: Atul mentioned physical impacts as an important context for India's motivation on climate mitigation. The Look Forward report S&P Global just published also included data on this topic. Specifically, research from S&P Global Sustainable1 found that almost all of India's economy and population will be exposed to more frequent extreme heat by 2050. To understand more about the physical risks and adaptation options India has, let's turn to my interview with Suruchi of The Energy & Resources Institute.

Suruchi Bhadwal: So I think the biggest issues are with regard to extremely events that we see right now in the form of flash floods, cyclone, heat events, storm surges that we see in the coastal areas, the heat waves.

Year-after-year, we are seeing that the summers are having exceedingly higher temperatures than normal, which are difficult to our area because we are already in the tropical area where the temperatures are already quite high. And therefore, having far more higher temperatures and consistently over a number of days basically makes it very difficult for many people to be productive and perform actively. So that's another area which is becoming a great concern.

And then, of course, the impacts across different sectors because of these changes, both the gradual changes and the extreme changes on agriculture, food production, linking to food security issues, the issues with regard to water security and with regards to how rainfall may play out.

Of course, we are observing increasing precipitation. So the difference between what you were doing early and what you're doing now, isn't that climate scientists have not been able to highlight on how this nature of these events were likely to unfold?

And the answer is no. That's not correct. The scientists have already always been saying that we will be hit by these events. And the consequences of the impacts of climate change are likely to be severe.

But 2 decades back, nobody was listening to us. And there are people who were telling us that you are trying to scare us for one reason. But when now today, these events are striking us and it's evident to everybody because we are experiencing and we are in the midst of these changes, all of us world over world are experiencing changes in the climate in one form or the other being hit by it, including India.

Esther Whieldon: Have flash floods and storm surges and heat waves, have those been an issue in India for a long time? Or how have they changed in recent years? How are they getting worse?

Suruchi Bhadwal: Well, every second year or third year, some part of the country is flooded. Every second year or third year, there are regions across the country, which received heavy precipitation, which is of an unusual quantity, which that location is not able to handle, for example, the Mumbai floods.

In fact, the shocking thing was New Delhi was flooded this year and waterlogged in many parts. So the kind and the nature of the events have changed. Their formats have changed. We're getting large amounts of rain together, which are leading to waterlogging and flooding situations in cities and urban areas, which are not prepared to deal with those quantums of water and therefore, there are due challenges with regards to infrastructure that's getting affected, people getting affected, jobs getting affected because people are not able to go and contribute to work.

And the timeline is usually for a period of 2 to 3 days. So that much amount of time and productivity basically getting affected. And of course, that has an implication on the economy of the region with regards to the noncontributions.

So yes, so all these things that are happening, both in urban areas and rural areas, now agriculture is getting affected. Droughts, because if more rainfall is falling in a short period of time, then there are periods where there are larger spells of dryness that we are experiencing. While you may have a have rain for a certain period that gets collected, it will be a long period after that, which is dry. And therefore, then we are having the challenges of dealing with the scarcity in that period.

So better management practices in place that may help address these challenges that we're talking about, whether rural or urban areas, I think is something we would need to look at. But as many other parts of the world, India is also facing huge challenges because of climate change and also because in India, a majority of the task force is not in white-collar jobs.

It's just not the biophysical events that we are talking about and the changes on it. But a large part of it is to do with the socioeconomics in case of India because we have more than 60% of people in the country still dependent on primary sources of living like agriculture and forest and fisheries-based livelihoods. And therefore, the socioeconomics for us are also very daunting. So while these biophysical risks emerge and are hitting us, on the other hand, we have the huge challenge of managing the people and the people will likely to be far more sensitive to the consequences of these changes that we are talking about.

Esther Whieldon: So what are some examples of how climate change has affected the business operations or even economic performance of different sectors?

Suruchi Bhadwal: So if we were to pick up, say, for example, agriculture and the food production that we have. Now we are the largest population in the world and India prides in basically saying that we are a food secure nation today, right?

And with the nature of changes that we are experiencing, we are also exporting food to many countries. We're the largest producer of sugar, say, for example. We're also producing a large amount of wheat and rice that we are basically exporting to other countries.

Now with the challenges of climate change, there are impacts on food production. There are impacts on productivity rates that we see across different parts of the country. The quality of the food that is basically getting produced.

And therefore, huge challenges with regard to food security, these had implications on imports and exports, of course, has implications of the economy of the country in the larger context. It's just not about the staple food that is likely to get affected.

All crops are sensitive in some way or the other s whether we're talking about food crops, we are talking about horticulture crops, so fruits, polyculture, vegetable crops. So all crops. And today, it is just 2, 3 weeks back, well prices of tomatoes meters have just escalated like anything over here.

I'm not sure whether it's the same in the other parts of the world. And a big reason for it is the heavy rainfall and flash flood incidences that we have observed in the last 2, 3 weeks, which have just damaged the crops to an extent that the prices have gone more than INR 200 a kilo. And I think it's an obnoxious amount to pay for just 1 kg of tomatoes. And the prices are still not gone down. So if the crop is adversely affected, how does it basically affect the markets? And how does it affect people who are having to pay a huge amount to be able to when the food run their plate?

So huge linkages that we see on the production side in the agriculture case, the links to the pricing, the links to the overall economy of the country when we scale it up at a larger scale because this does have implications on markets, it has implications on pricing, it has implications on exports and imports and how the country can basically perform with regards to its self-sustainment with regard to food availability.

Esther Whieldon: And for context, INR 200 per kilo, what is the price normally? Or would you expect the price to be on average?

Suruchi Bhadwal: So tomatoes, before the peak that I'm dropping about easily was being sold between INR 20 to INR 40 a kg.

Esther Whieldon: Wow. Well, I guess that leads nicely to another question, which is like what are some of the adaptation strategies or options or things that need to happen in India to help it manage these risks?

Suruchi Bhadwal: So yes, I think one of the things we may clear about is that stand-alone pocketed efforts is not going to help people in terms of addressing the challenges with regard to climatic risks. There is a very strong need for mainstreaming climate action into country policy and planning.

So that the scalability, the scales that we are talking about can be achieved through those policies and programs because they are implemented across the country, and therefore, that's the scale we need where every person out there who is basically likely to be affected in some form of the other gets addressed in a certain way and has some preparedness available at his or her own level.

So that is their requirement of the day. There are National Action Plans of Climate Change that we have. So India has its National Action Plan for Climate Change. We also have at the subnational scale, state level plans on climate change, which outline both mitigation and adaptation strategies. But however, unfortunately, while these plans have been developed and they looked into every sector and possible interventions that can be taken forward. But there's not much that has happened with regard to the implementation that we see in the country.

In the last easily, I would say these plans have been in place for the last 13 years, 14 years now in certain cases. And unfortunately, implementation has been very weak. And there are obvious reasons for that because there was no clarity with regard to the mainstreaming and the integration with current policy frameworks and planning frameworks that existed in the country, and we were taken forward as stand-alone initiatives and interventions that one needed to look at. And therefore, the challenges of investments and finances to implement those actions and since budgets did not include them in their planning, these interventions, both our outline was part of the planned reports whenever taken forward in the same manner that we were supposed to be able to create an impact.

Esther Whieldon: Can you give us 1 or 2 concrete examples? What are some of the different adaptation options available to India or that would work best there?

Suruchi Bhadwal: So we have a national mission on sustainable agriculture under the National Action Plan for Climate Change and the National Water Mission, for example, and a National Action Plan on Climate Change and Human Health.

So when you take these large plans on the ground to see how they're unfolding as different projects. So for example, there is an activity with a focus on resilient agricultural households where the focus is largely on promoting the growth of climate hard varieties, which require less water for growth in dry belts of India, where water is an issue and scarcity would basically be an issue and result if the water situation were to change and there would be far more or less water available for irrigating your lands then possibly the crops need to change, and therefore, we need to grow crops, which require less water.

So yes, we are looking at climate hard varieties that can be promoted, climate hardy crops that can be promoted then. So most of the projects, basically that are being considered for implementation are in the agriculture and the water resource sector.

So there are projects with a focus on water conservation. So water storage, rejuvenation and revival of ponds, lakes, tanks, which can be used for irrigation. There's a focus on recharge of groundwater aquifers through water conservation measures that can be promoted. There's a focus on health resilience with regard to early warning systems to maybe extreme events to systems standard operating protocols. Say, for example, for better response to vector-borne diseases, diseases like monilia, chikungunya, dengue.

So all of there is work that I would say, spread across different sectors that are being looked at to be able to take forward the early warnings with regard to heat wave conditions getting developed based on temperature forecasts in the summer months.

And there are standard operating protocols. Once a heatwave is identified in a particular season, during some particular days, of a particular year, then there are warnings that are issued to those regions and the standard operating protocols that the city municipality, et cetera, rolls out by way of which there are advisories given to people on operating procedures, limited number of hours in outdoor environment.

Hydrating yourself to prevent dehydration. So there are many things that are underway. But yes, but I think the scales are so large that we talk about. And of course, it's a large country with a larege number of people. So our challenges are also huge.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. So we just heard that India is working on a number of adaptation options. So did Suruchi talk about how the business community is working towards understanding or adapting to the physical risks of climate change?

Esther Whieldon: Yes. She said that for the most part, until recently, companies have been focusing on tracking and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, and our own research kind of backs that up. The S&P Global Look Forward report we mentioned earlier found that less than one quarter of Indian companies have a plan to adapt to the physical impacts of climate change.

Lindsey Hall: This is something we'll continue to track to see how it changes overtime. Please stay tuned as we explore how countries and businesses are navigating the low carbon transition and adapting to climate change.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider, and a special thanks to our producer, Kyle Cangialosi. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and sign up for our weekly newsletter, ESG Insider. See you next time.

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