The sun has won, heatwaves have got money, and civic-tech is coming to the rescue

Dear Reader,

We weren’t surprised when an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General found that Green India Mission had fallen spectacularly short in its mission to increase forest cover: 91.87% short, to be precise.

No matter where you live in India, whether you read/watch the news or not, you cannot fail to notice how greenery is shrinking. The CAG, on its part, has delivered a sharp knock on the knuckles, calling out the Mission’s failure to coordinate with other flagship programmes such as CAMPA (which manages funds paid by developers when forest land is cleared for non-forest uses like mining or infrastructure), MGNREGS (the rural jobs scheme), Nagar Van Yojana (to create green spaces in urban areas), and School Nursery Yojana (for school students to grow trees).

Instead of asking locals which areas needed help, targets were handed down from above like homework. And what’s worse, the students were found cheating: “audit evaluations revealed inflated data, overstated achievements… and GIS analysis showing that 70 per cent of sampled sites had no noticeable changes attributable to GIM.” This would be embarrassing if you were a student, but not for the government.

Jokes aside, there’s much reason to cheer this week.

Solar is undoubtedly among the sunniest stories in the current phase of India’s energy transition. The latest clean energy milestone: seven companies participating in an auction in Rajasthan offered to provide “firm”, round‑the‑clock renewable power at a price of Rs 5.25 per unit for the next 25 years. This price is lower than would be provided by new coal plants, and will not increase for 25 years (as there will be no fuel cost increases down the line – the sun shines for free; in real terms, with price adjusted for inflated, the real price will actually fall). Since all seven winning companies had bid within a one-paisa range of Rs 5.25 per unit, this looks less like an outlier and more like a new market benchmark.

The model uses solar generation and battery storage: solar panels generate electricity during the day, batteries store the excess, and the stored energy is released when demand peaks in the evening and night. A study by the India Energy and Climate Center at the University of Berkeley says India’s steady year‑round sunshine makes this system especially effective, with 3 GW of solar and 12 GWh of battery storage required to deliver reliable baseload‑like power. (Baseload power is the minimum amount of electricity the power grid needs to supply at any given time.)

This is important because industries that run 24x7, like data centres, steel and aluminum, can now tap into clean, firm electricity at a fixed price for decades. For India, this means cheaper power and less pollution. For the rest of the world, it’s proof that renewables plus storage can match coal’s reliability, without its downsides, and at a cheaper price.

What this means for you: Does this mean lower electricity bills? Not yet, until the system is redesigned. But, this is a signal about where investment is heading and jobs will be created: renewable power generation and procurement, battery storage, energy markets, carbon accounting and the business case for decarbonisation.

India has officially recognised heatwaves as a notified natural calamity: from 2026 to 2031, actions to counter heatwaves will get support through the State Disaster Response Fund and the National Disaster Response Fund. Until now, heatwaves were largely treated as a “local” phenomenon, and states could only use 10% or less of their annual SDRF allocation for heatwave relief. The new development puts substantially more money behind the problem.

Some 250 Indian cities and districts have heat action plans. But are these plans robust enough to actually absorb and deploy these funds effectively? And will the availability of funds spur the remaining 650 districts to create their own plans? More importantly, will these funds reach the people most at risk? We can only guess, and I would put my money on… not “no”, but “not yet”.

Cities, villages, neighbourhoods – all have to invest in cooling, early warnings, worker protection and heat-resilient infrastructure. And this has to be done before the next heatwave rather than scrambling during it. This is the topic this piece on Climate Action Live examines: what India needs to do to not just get through the next heatwave, but prepare for a hotter future. Do also read why extreme heat is now a boardroom concern. As Lizzo would say:

What this means for you: If you work outdoors, run a business, manage workers, build infrastructure or live in a heat-prone area, heat preparedness is becoming a practical necessity. Watch what your state and city are doing with the new funding, ask whether your workplace has a heat plan and treat cooling, hydration, shade and altered work hours as resilience measures, not perks.

Bengaluru has no shortage of civic problems: garbage, water shortage, air pollution, potholes, traffic... It also has no shortage of tech talent. And indeed, some tech talent is applying itself to making the city liveable again. GEODHA, for instance, provides an AI-powered app where residents can take a photo of a garbage dump and, lo and behold, the AI verifies the image, selects the category of the problem and detects its location, before sending a complaint to the city’s Sahaaya system – in 4-5 clicks and under a minute. Users can track complaints and follow up when something is marked resolved without actually being fixed. GEODHA plans to put reports on a public map, showing their status and whether users believe they have actually been resolved. The same system could eventually be used for civic surveys, from mapping waterlogging and dengue hotspots to monitoring tree health.

Civic-tech initiatives have similarly used tech to help residents report and track local problems in Pune and Mumbai, as have platforms such as FixMyStreet in the UK and SeeClickFix in the US.

Now, could AI tackle Bengaluru’s traffic? Imagine a system combining live traffic speeds, signal data, roadworks, weather, accidents and historical patterns to predict congestion before it happens, then dynamically adjust signals across entire corridors. It could prioritise buses and ambulances, identify bottlenecks caused by parking or roadworks, and simulate the impact of proposed interventions before governments spend money building them. The technology exists. What Bengaluru needs is for its famously clever tech ecosystem and its notoriously fragmented civic machinery to start talking to each other. We live for that day.

What this means for you: You can use – or heck, build – a tool to report a garbage dump, a flooded road or some other civic failure (rather than reporting your outrage on X or your WhatsApp groups). And if you want to work in climate and sustainability, you might want to sharpen your tech skills.

What are you getting up to this weekend? We wouldn’t miss the screening of The Giants by ALT EFF environmental film clubs in various cities on 21 August.

Our website is undergoing an upgrade, and the Carbon Dating section will be back with an improved search function on Monday. Wish us luck!

For more, check out this post!

Job hunting in the climate sector? The listing below is a sample of what we have at Career Catalysts (you can wait till Monday for a better, more agile search in this section too!) Applying ASAP since they haven’t mentioned deadlines except IWP, and good luck!

Sustainability & Business Advisory, Sattva Consulting
Support sustainability and ESG strategy, reporting, climate/GHG accounting, circularity, agriculture and impact advisory engagements for corporates and funders.
📥 Apply ASAP here
📍 Bangalore/Mumbai/Delhi/Gurugram (On-site)Forestry Management Expert, Earth Day Network India
Support plantation, ecological restoration, agroforestry and biodiversity conservation projects across Eastern India.
📥 Apply ASAP via email Send your CV and a brief description of relevant assignments, language proficiency, current location and availability for travel to stiffle@earthday.org

📍 Eastern India; travel to remote project sites (Part-time/Project-based)
🔗
Gandak Gharial Recovery Project, Wildlife Trust of India
Support conservation and recovery through habitat protection, ecological monitoring and stakeholder/community engagement.
📍 Valmiki Nagar, Bihar (On-site/Field-based)
📥 Apply here ASAP or send your CV and a cover letter with the subject line "CV: Gandak Gharial Recovery Project" to swati.bhargava@wti.org.in!

See you on the other side, folks!

Madhur Singh
Team Climate Action Live