4 min readNew DelhiNov 19, 2025 09:15 AM IST
First published on: Nov 18, 2025 at 10:28 PM IST
Casting doubt over various estimates of financing required to decarbonise India, former Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha has warned that raising global capital to fund such endeavors is “very, very difficult” and that even Indian corporate capital expenditure has not been what may be conservatively required to mitigate climate change due to carbon emissions from power, transport, steel, and cement sectors.
Referring to the findings of various studies, Sinha said at a seminar on Tuesday that $50 billion-$100 billion of additional corporate capital expenditure in the current decade was needed for India to be on a meaningful decarbonisation path. But this would be difficult, he said, considering corporate capex in India has flattened in recent years.
The seminar discussed a recent report by former Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Rakesh Mohan and former Executive Director Janak Raj, both of whom are now at New Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). As per the report by Mohan and Raj, India’s annual climate finance requirement for 2022-2030 is $54 billion. In contrast, the Larry Summers and NK Singh-led independent expert group formed under India’s G20 Presidency in 2023 estimated additional annual spending of $3 trillion by developing countries by 2030.
Sinha, who was Minister of State for Finance from late 2014 to mid-2016 and then in the civil aviation ministry for the subsequent three years, is currently the President of Mumbai-based sustainable and climate investment private equity firm Eversource Capital. Before his decade-long stint as Member of Parliament that ended in June 2024, he was a Partner at consulting firm McKinsey for over 13 years and Partner and Managing Director for India at philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network, among other positions.
Sinha also warned that global capital was not interested in investing in India’s capital-intensive infrastructure projects when better opportunities were available in developed markets such as the US in high-return sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI).
“I say this as President of Eversource Capital. I am in the middle of this set of issues in terms of raising capital… And it is very, very difficult. Global capital, frankly, just looks at it and says ‘If I can put capital in an AI data centre in Virginia and get 18 per cent dollar (return), why would I go for 15 per cent rupee IRR (internal rate of return)?’ No fiduciary, no pension fund, no insurance company is going to put (in) money,” Sinha said.
The internal rate of return is a measure of profitability of an investment.
“Whether global capital is going to come in and fill in a $15 billion gap or $54 billion gap is a theoretical question. The practical question is can we mobilise large pools of domestic capital so that we are in control of our destiny.”
According to the former minister, for the country to achieve the government’s objective of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2070, coal-fired power plants will have to be shuttered by the mid-2040s.
“We have to be on a very different decarbonisation trajectory from what the government is saying. And all that the government has right now is for the power sector… For the other industrial sectors, there is no baseline case right now. But if we take the baseline case for power and then start to estimate what it will take under current course of speed, there is a very different decarbonisation trajectory that ends up happening…and the Net Zero 2070 projections have to be much sharper,” Sinha said.
Sinha also warned that global capital was not interested in investing in India’s capital-intensive infrastructure projects when better opportunities were available in developed markets. (File Photo) 
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