This blog post is authored by EPP Fellow Mirza Sadaqat Huda
South Asia is one of the most conflict-prone regions in the world, in addition to facing chronic energy shortages and extreme vulnerability to climate change. Paradoxical to the existence of high- and low-level conflicts, some of the most ambitious transnational energy projects are being planned or are under construction in the region. While the development of gas and hydroelectricity features prominently in the regional energy agenda, opportunities for international cooperation on solar and wind farms have not yet garnered substantial interest from policymakers. In addition, very little is known about the potential impact of these projects on socio-economic development and regional cohesion. In this context, examining the potential for synergies between renewable energy projects at the India-Pakistan border can provide a compelling South Asian example of the ambitious United Nations goal of linking sustainable development to sustaining peace.
The geopolitical landscape of South Asia creates significant challenges to energy and environmental cooperation. A recent study by the Asia Foundation has shown that six out of eight countries in the region[1] are faced with national and international conflicts that have medium to high levels of intensity. In South Asia, domestic disputes related to religious and ethnic minorities have resulted in armed conflict as well as political disputes between neighbouring states. For instance, in 2019, a terror attack in Indian controlled Jammu and Kashmir led to Pakistan and India conducting airstrikes against each other. More recently, India enacted the controversial Citizen Amendment Act, which has created huge internal turmoil and threatened to undermine Delhi’s relationship with its neighbors.
These conflicts have constrained a regional response to the chronic energy security of South Asia, where roughly 255 million people lack access to electricity. While studies by the World Bank and the United Nations have substantiated the technical, economic and environmental rationale of regional energy cooperation for decades, it is only in the last five years that bilateral energy cooperation has increased substantially and progress has been made on the planning and construction of several multilateral projects. India has signed a number of agreements on coal power plants, transmission lines and hydroelectric projects with Bangladesh and Nepal. More importantly, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal have agreed, for the first time in the history of the subcontinent, to undertake multilateral cooperation on hydroelectricity. In the western part of South Asia, regional adversaries Afghanistan and Pakistan are members of the multilateral Central Asia-South Asia hydroelectric project (CASA-1000). This 1.16-billion-dollar project aims to export 1,300 megawatts of electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Further, the $10-billion-dollar TAPI pipeline is expected to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, potentially facilitating energy interdependencies between traditional rivals.
Provided that certain political conditions and social and environmental safeguards are met, these transnational gas and hydroelectric projects can make an enormous contribution towards sustainable development and peace. Thus far, policymakers have not prioritised solar parks and wind farms within the regional cooperation agenda due to both practical and political considerations. For instance, while renewable energy tariffs are rapidly decreasing in India, Brookings Institution Fellows Tongia and Gross have argued that intermittent and seasonal availability of resources, the high cost of storage and entrenched political interests in fossil fuels challenge the development of large-scale renewable energy projects. Successful trade in hydroelectricity between Bhutan and India and in gas between China and Myanmar has also encouraged South Asian policymakers to look towards dams and pipelines as conduits of energy cooperation.
However, plans by India and Pakistan to construct solar and wind farms near each other’s territory provide an opportunity for technical cooperation that can complement the current momentum towards energy integration. Both countries are planning to install solar panels and wind turbines near the shared Thar Desert, an ecologically diverse landscape that falls in between the international border of the two countries. Currently, the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat that share borders with Pakistan have solar and wind energy capacities of 4,046 MW and 9,760 MW respectively. Indian projects include the Charanka Solar Park, the largest solar park in Asia that is located just 50km from the border with Pakistan. In October 2019 it was reported that land close to the international border with Pakistan was being considered to set up 30 GW and 25 GW of solar and wind energy plants in Gujarat and Rajasthan, respectively. In Pakistan, the 100 MW Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Punjab is located approximately 100km from the Indian border. Similar to India, Pakistan is planning to capitalise on its energy and wind resources, and is considering proposals for a 400 MW solar plant and a 640 MW wind farm in Sindh.
India’s and Pakistan’s individual efforts to develop clean energy resources in close proximity to their shared border have created substantial opportunities for collaboration. In July 2013, it was reported that a delegation of Pakistani experts visited India to study the use of solar plants in irrigation, a mere six months after one of the worst border skirmishes between the two countries. This suggests that geopolitical issues, no matter how intractable, may not necessarily derail collaboration on energy diversification and transition. Despite the volatility of current relations between India and Pakistan, the two countries may consider facilitating cross-border exchanges between scientists and engineers on renewable energy technology. This can include field visits to solar and wind farms, joint conferences and collaboration on research projects. In 2030, when the cost of solar power in India will fall to as low as $0.02 per kilowatt hour and storage expenses will decrease by 70%, technical cooperation can give way to energy trade between India and Pakistan.
Expert communities can often contribute to conflict resolution by providing scientific advice to policymakers, as demonstrated by scholars such as Peter Haas and Saleem Ali. Technical cooperation on wind and solar farms may have some additional benefits in terms of peace and sustainable development, some of which are described below.
Firstly, cooperation on solar and wind farms can bypass and perhaps moderate two important constraints to multilateral energy projects in South Asia – pipeline politics and hydro politics.
Pipelines such as the TAPI are subjected to complex great power politics between the United States, Russia, China and Iran. While the relationship between India and Pakistan is often unstable, bilateral cooperation on renewables will allow the two countries to calibrate the benefits and risk of energy interdependence in isolation of great power politics. Energy experts such as Indra Overland have debunked myths that frame renewable energy cooperation from the geopolitical lens of competition. Cooperation on renewable energy can also reduce some of the challenges of pipeline politics. Policymakers in New Delhi have argued that the TAPI will provide Islamabad with a ‘control button’ on the country’s energy, as the pipeline traverses through Pakistan before entering India. Perhaps by exporting renewable energy to Pakistan, India can be assured that deliberate disruptions to the TAPI will be discouraged through mutual interdependencies.
Cooperation on renewables will also be less contentious than large hydropower projects on shared river basins. The proposed multilateral hydroelectric projects provide an important step towards transitioning from the coal to cleaner sources of energy. However, such projects have come under scrutiny for perceived impacts on the environment and communities. Disputes regarding sharing the waters of the Indus and the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basins have also undermined regional cohesion in South Asia. The most important policy responses to these issues are the implementation of social and environmental safeguards, and the cancellation of ecologically destructive projects. However, what may also lessen the criticism of hydroelectric projects is incremental progress towards solar and wind farms, which will demonstrate the region’s commitment towards clean energy transitions as well as issues around energy access and poverty alleviation.
Secondly, cooperation on solar and wind energy by India and Pakistan can facilitate a regional water -energy nexus approach to climate change, with significant benefits towards regional stability. An initiative by EcoPeace Middle East found that exploiting synergies between Jordan’s solar power potential and Israel’s expertise in desalination can contribute towards climate goals and the Middle East peace process between Jordan, Israel and Palestine. The project envisions Jordan as a regional hub for solar plants, exporting energy to Israel to power the desalination of water from the Mediterranean Sea. The clean water will be exported to Jordan and Palestine, thereby increasing the energy and water security of the region, and increasing interdependence. Such holistic projects are already being undertaken in Pakistan, where water pumps and purification facilities powered by solar panels have ensured safe drinking water to underprivileged populations in the Thar Desert. The EcoPeace Middle East project is relevant to South Asia not only because of similarities in the level of conflict, but also in terms of challenges posed by water crises.
Lastly, India-Pakistan collaboration on solar and wind energy can benefit from innovative finance options that monetize not only renewable energy generation but social co-benefits such as peacebuilding. Peace Renewable Energy Credits (P-RECs) are a new variant of traditional RECs that denote the environmental, social and peacebuilding attributes associated with renewable energy generation from projects located in fragile settings, including conflict affected areas and humanitarian missions. The Thar desert, where a majority of new wind and solar projects are being proposed, is home to socio-economically challenged populations, several protected wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. It has seen perennial border disputes between India and Pakistan, which in contemporary times have centred around Sir Creek, an estuary south of the Rann of Kutch. The P-REC can help capture the non-power benefits of bilateral collaboration on wind and solar projects as they relate to poverty alleviation, ecological protection and détente between India and Pakistan and offer an additional way to monetize the renewable energy.
India and Pakistan can benefit from technical cooperation such as study exchanges and joint research and experimentation on solar and wind energy technology. Efforts towards policy and tariff harmonization and investment into cross-border infrastructure can perhaps one day lead to renewable energy trade between the two countries. Such efforts would complement regional hydroelectric and gas projects and may collectively provide the necessary energy to galvanize the peace process in South Asia.
[1] The region of South Asia is generally understood to comprise the eight members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka