The drive from Ranchi to Hazaribagh within the japanese Indian state of Jharkhand is just 65 miles, however it takes almost three hours. We swerve to keep away from schoolchildren chatting with buddies and meandering down the freeway, honk at cows to get out of the way in which, and speed up previous pickups reconfigured as makeshift transport autos overflowing with employees. Men in sandals push bicycles overloaded with baggage of coal down the freeway, whereas on the again roads near Hazaribagh, girls carry buckets of the stuff on their heads.

Coal is what introduced me to Jharkhand, one among India’s poorest and most polluted states. The pedestrian colliers, unlawful miners making an attempt to make ends meet, are simply the beginning. All alongside the path to our vacation spot, the Topa Open Coal Mine, a caravan of huge, colourful vehicles stuffed to the brim with coal barrel towards us within the reverse lane. When we lastly attain the mine, I see the supply of all of it: an explosion has blasted via a wall of rock, opening entry to new tranches of coal to feed the nation’s fast-growing energy and industrial wants. says JK John, the senior mining supervisor on website employed by a subsidiary of the state-owned Coal India Ltd.: “Here, coal is in demand.”

Two flights and greater than 900 miles away, the northwestern state of Rajasthan is a world aside. Along a easily paved freeway from the Jaisalmer airport, wind generators dot the panorama so far as the attention can see. Farther from the city’s middle, we strategy a subject of photo voltaic panels, comprising a 300-MW energy plant opened in 2021 by the Indian firm ReNew Power, offering electrical energy for the rising inhabitants of the state of Maharashtra, residence to Mumbai. Even because the area expands its renewable-energy trade, the environment stays clear and nice sufficient to help a thriving vacationer commerce.

Photograph by Sarker Protick for TIME

Jharkhand and Rajasthan, so completely different in look, are being formed by the identical elementary pressure: India is rising so quickly that its vitality demand is successfully insatiable. But the 2 states current starkly completely different solutions to that demand. Historically, fossil fuels from locations like Jharkhand powered industrialization. But right now, with local weather issues rising, many consultants are calling for India to ditch coal as quickly as potential and embrace the green-energy mannequin so prevalent in Rajasthan.

Much rides on which strategy dominates India’s vitality future. In the three many years since decreasing emissions grew to become a dialogue level on the worldwide stage, analysts have portrayed the U.S., China, and Europe as essentially the most essential targets for slicing air pollution. But because the curve lastly begins to bend in these locations, it’s grow to be clear that India will quickly be crucial nation within the local weather change effort.

Manual carry operator contained in the management room in one of many final remaining underground mines.

Sarker Protick for TIME

In December, I spent 10 days in India, visiting coal communities, touring renewable-energy websites, and speaking with leaders within the nation’s political and monetary hubs to grasp India’s strategy to the vitality transition. The image that emerged is of a authorities following an strategy uncharted for a rustic of its scale: pursue inexperienced applied sciences within the midst of industrialization whereas leaving the destiny of coal to the market. “India, as a responsible global citizen, is willing to make the bet that it can satisfy the aspiration for higher living standards, while pursuing a quite different energy strategy from any large country before,” says Suman Bery, who leads NITI Aayog, the Indian authorities’s financial policy-making company. India, Bery says, will pursue clear vitality whereas searching for a “balance between energy access and affordability, energy security, and environmental considerations.”

Where that steadiness is struck might tip the local weather scales worldwide. India contributes 7% of the emissions that trigger world warming right now, a proportion that may increase alongside its financial system. This progress will assist decide whether or not—and by how far—the world blows previous the purpose of retaining world temperatures from rising greater than the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5°C. Equally essential, India’s strategy is being watched elsewhere. If it might probably use low-carbon growth to deliver prosperity to its 1.4 billion individuals, others will comply with. Failure might result in a retrenchment into fossil fuels throughout the Global South.

What the Global North does issues too. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates India wants $1.4 trillion in further funding in coming many years to align its vitality system with world local weather targets; that may very possible require reforms at worldwide lenders just like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to facilitate the stream of cash. The finest consequence, observers say, is one the place India will get the assistance it must make your best option for everybody. “India has to do it for itself,” says Rachel Kyte, the dean of the Fletcher School of worldwide affairs at Tufts University. “And India needs to do it for the world.”

In a bitter irony, coal-rich Jharkhand can’t present dependable electrical energy even to hospitals, colleges, and different important service suppliers. India’s second poorest state could also be an excessive instance, however such issues pervade each nook of the nation and are the crux of its vitality and local weather problem. It is, essentially, a growing nation, and its leaders don’t need to write off any gas supply whereas vitality demand continues its meteoric rise. As the nation’s inhabitants swells to as excessive as a projected 1.8 billion over the following 40 years, and its financial system grows at an excellent sooner fee, the nation might want to add an influence system equal in dimension to that of your complete European Union, in line with the IEA.

Historically, growth at that scale occurred a technique: fossil fuels constructed a rustic’s industrial base, after which leaders pivoted to a lower-carbon, service-oriented mannequin. China, one among historical past’s most profitable examples of speedy modernization, constructed its industrial capability by relentlessly including coal-fired energy crops and now boasts the second largest financial system on the earth, run totally on coal. With that base established, the nation has not too long ago begun its full-fledged growth of renewable vitality.

To earn a dwelling, many native residents gather and promote coal from the Jharia coalfield in Dhanbad.

Sarker Protick for TIME

India, with its plentiful coal sources, might merely do the identical. While analysis exhibits {that a} speedy growth of renewable vitality might present the nation with dependable electrical energy given enough funding, no different nation has tried it at India’s scale. Attempting a renewable revolution comes with some inevitable dangers, like technical challenges and vulnerability to international provide chains. Meanwhile, coal is tried and examined.

Above all, leaders in India insist that they’ve the best to energy up utilizing coal. In the lingo of the local weather world, each nation has its personal population-based “fair share” of emissions it might probably produce earlier than the world hits unsafe ranges of worldwide warming. In this formulation, the U.S. and European international locations have already far exceeded their limits; India, alternatively, has contributed solely 4% of worldwide emissions since 1850, regardless of being residence to 18% of the world’s inhabitants, in line with a 2019 U.N. report.

Whatever the reasoning, nobody I spoke with in India, from lecturers to renewable-energy executives, would endorse a swift transition away from coal. “India’s not married to coal,” says Rahul Tongia, a senior fellow on the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. “It’s just that’s what India’s got.” Instead, authorities officers are working to advertise renewable vitality with out actively working to close down coal.

These giant scale tractors are generally used within the mining areas to dig via the coal seams.

Sarker Protick for TIME

At the middle of this strategy sits Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi, whose help for solar energy extends again to his time as the highest official within the state of Gujarat within the 2010s, has set daring renewable-energy targets, saying at COP26 in 2021 that the nation would set up 500 gigawatts of renewable-energy capability by 2030. That’s equal to fifteen instances California’s present renewable functionality.

To get there, the Modi authorities has merged its renewable-energy and clean-technology goals with its coverage of liberalizing the financial system and boosting the non-public sector. Bery, of NITI Aayog, describes the federal government’s strategy as market-based: making a context for clear applied sciences to “edge out coal in the market” quite than counting on authorities mandates. India, he tells me in his New Delhi workplace, must be “backing all these other technologies, so that it’s a pure commercial choice, rather than a regulatory choice to phase out coal.”

Solar panels put in by Koku Solar Pvt. Ltd line the rooftops of residential buildings in Mumbai, permitting them to run utilizing inexperienced vitality.

Sarker Protick for TIME

Industry insiders say this strategy is working. The government-backed Solar Energy Corp. of India, for instance, all however eradicated the danger that states would renege on their agreements—a major fear for the banks that finance such initiatives—by serving as an middleman between private-sector builders and states. If states don’t pay, the company can primarily pressure them to take action—an innovation that has performed a “fundamental” function in permitting the trade to develop, says Sumant Sinha, who has led ReNew Power since 2011.

Using coverage to drive private-sector funding is the norm in locations just like the U.S., however it’s new for India. For many years, electrical energy manufacturing and distribution in India was managed by state-owned enterprises, from state-owned coal mines to state-owned energy crops to the state-owned grid. With the brand new strategy, the non-public sector deploys clean-energy applied sciences, and the federal government facilitates.

This is a elementary, ideological change in Indian governance. The preamble to India’s structure declares it a “socialist” state. But the funding in renewable vitality that has led capability to double since Modi took workplace has come virtually solely from non-public corporations—and it isn’t slowing down. “The most natural thing for India to meet this burgeoning electricity requirement is to meet it through renewable energy, because it’s the cheapest, most commercially sound thing to do,” says Sinha. The IEA initiatives that solar energy will make up round 30% of India’s electrical energy technology by 2040, matching coal’s share. This private-sector vitality was on full show in Rajasthan, the place I noticed huge wind and photo voltaic farms that belong to the nation’s largest non-public gamers, together with the mega-corporations Tata and Adani.

In August 2022, the Mumbai airport converted to 100% inexperienced sources for vitality utilization.

Sarker Protick for TIME

But the deal with markets additionally displays arduous politics. Driving round Jharkhand, a state of 33 million individuals, it’s not possible to overlook how entrenched the coal trade has grow to be. Livelihoods rely on it, from educated supervisors working the present to indigent locals scrounging for scraps of coal. On the outskirts of the Topa mine, I noticed a complete village deserted to make manner for miners to open a brand new coal seam.

Displacing such a colossus, policymakers say, can’t be completed with a regulation right here and there. “The minute you say ‘no coal’ there will be political implications. There will be riots,” says Amitabh Kant, who’s main India’s G-20 convention this 12 months. “But if coal becomes commercially nonviable, that will be acceptable because the market will do it.”

It’s a daring wager. Even with a real transition from coal possible many years away, many native officers and activists throughout India have begun to name for devoted applications to make sure a “just transition” that protects these affected by a transfer away from coal.

A clean transition issues not just for India but additionally for the remainder of the world—it’s a take a look at case for the way to implement an vitality shift in growing international locations whereas supporting their financial progress.

India’s leaders are keenly conscious of the worldwide stakes. Wherever I traveled there, I noticed indicators celebrating India internet hosting this 12 months’s G-20, the annual discussion board for the world’s largest economies, at which the host is eager to make local weather a central subject. India will tout its efforts to spur behavioral change amongst customers, and its nascent use of hydrogen as an energy-storage medium. The conferences, Kant says, may lead international locations to come back to settlement on the way to reform establishments just like the IMF and World Bank to allow them to assist growing international locations decarbonize. The vitality transition globally will price untold trillions of {dollars}, and most international locations now agree that these worldwide monetary establishments must create devices to make investing in locations like India much less dangerous for personal financiers.

Birds swoop via smog in Delhi on a December morning with air high quality within the “very unhealthy” class.

Sarker Protick for TIME

To really ship on such an agenda, although, India should first persuade the remainder of the world that its mannequin for low-carbon growth can work. Modi and others have already begun a marketing campaign to indicate the remainder of the world how critical it’s—and to level out Western hypocrisy. At COP27, the annual U.N. local weather convention held in November in Egypt, India lobbied for international locations to comply with part out “all fossil fuels” quite than simply coal, an implicit problem to the U.S. and different Western international locations which might be wealthy in oil. “Why should only coal be phased out?” Kant asks me rhetorically. And Modi’s LiFE marketing campaign, which focuses on the function behavioral change can play in slicing emissions, stems from a recognition that India’s per capita emissions are simply 40% of the worldwide common.

India’s vitality future stays India’s “choice.” But for all the nation’s insistence on sovereignty, by marrying its vitality coverage to its financial liberalization it has chosen a path of interdependence. In leaving the velocity of its inexperienced transition to the whims of the market, India has accepted a dependence on value alerts, funding decisions, and financial tendencies far past the management of New Delhi or Mumbai. “The political signals, the policy evolution, or even the international commitments are also contingent on how quickly the market participants are able to respond,” says Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, an Indian environmental NGO.

Which means our future on the planet, as soon as once more, relies on a collective selection. Political leaders throughout the Global North and South can reform the establishments that govern the worldwide financial system, making certain that the market decisively favors clear vitality over fossil fuels. Or, we are able to all bid farewell to world local weather targets and gird ourselves for the much more pricey risks that come subsequent. —With reporting by Solcyre Burga and Leslie Dickstein/New York

Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com.