As tensions rise in the Middle East from the ongoing US-Iran war and risks grow around key shipping routes, energy markets have been reminded how quickly price shocks can travel. India, a major importer of fossil fuels, is exposed whenever the world's supply lines tighten.
At the Economist's Resilient Futures Summit in New Delhi, Sagar Adani, Adani Group Executive involved in the group's energy portfolio, delivered a plain insight: In this century, energy access will decide resilience, and India's best defence is to electrify everything.
"We've all seen how conflict in one region can disrupt supply chains across continents," he said, warning that energy shocks can hit economies overnight.
Adani said India's long-term constraints - water security, food systems, and digital growth - all run into the same bottleneck: reliable, affordable energy. He pointed to a wide gap in consumption: India's per-capita energy use is about one-third of the global average and roughly one-fifth of China's, he said
To become a developed economy by 2047, India would need to add nearly 2,000 gigawatts of new capacity over the next two decades, while keeping energy affordable and increasingly clean, he added.
The International Energy Agency has said India will be the largest source of global energy-demand growth through 2035, as urbanisation and rising incomes push consumption sharply higher.
That means what India builds - and how fast it electrifies - will shape global energy markets for years.
The message had a clear policy outline. Renewables must scale fast, Adani said, but land limits and intermittency mean India also needs a broader mix - hydro, efficient thermal power and nuclear - to ensure firm supply when conditions are not ideal.
At 31, Adani has become one of the public faces of the group's energy push. Public profiles say he joined the Adani Group in 2015 after studying economics at Brown University, and has been credited within the group with building out its solar and wind portfolio at Adani Green Energy.
The work, though, did not start in boardrooms. After Brown, he went straight into the field, beginning with the group's first solar plant in the interiors of south India. He spent months living at the site as the project took shape. Over the past decade, he has moved from that early stint to overseeing the group's wider energy agenda, now heavily focused on renewables and the green transition.
Adani framed the group's role as execution at scale. He cited Gautam Adani's public commitment of over $100 billion towards the energy transition and said the approach is meant to be integrated renewables, storage, transmission and green hydrogen - rather than isolated projects.
His broader point was geopolitical. "If India can build abundant, affordable and cleaner power fast enough, it will not only protect 1.4 billion people from external shocks, but also add stability to a global economy that increasingly depends on India's growth," he said.
(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)
