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Arko Datto

In a blue aura from LED lights, vendors set up shop in Delhi on a day when the air was so thick with pollution it was classified as hazardous to human health. Using LEDs, which need relatively little energy, is one of many ways India is looking to reduce its planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

In Nikol, an upscale neighborhood in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s most populous city, solar panels on houses and apartment buildings absorb the day’s last sunlight. From rural villagers to city dwellers, Indians increasingly are taking advantage of the ample sunshine to generate electricity.

Panels of photovoltaic cells installed over a canal in Vadodara, Gujarat, produce 10 megawatts of electricity. The idea of turning irrigation systems into power plants is increasingly being put into practice in India, where land can be expensive. Besides generating electricity cheaply, the panels have another big benefit: reducing the amount of water lost to evaporation.

This plant in Muktsar in the state of Punjab uses rice stubble and other organic farm waste as fuel to generate electricity. Farmers traditionally burn their paddies after harvest, but with growing concern about pollution, the number of biomass plants is increasing. This plant consumes about 220,000 tons of stubble a year.

Workers take a lunch break at the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, which makes passenger railcars. One of the largest such facilities in the world, it’s also carbon negative, using less electricity than the company generates from windmills and solar power plants.

Protima Das accompanies her 10-year-old son, Dhananjoy, to school. She will return later to walk home with him. The 33-year-old single mother cooks for three households to earn enough to send Dhananjoy to a private school, with the hope that it will set him on a path to a prosperous future, though one that likely means he’ll use more energy. The two live in East Delhi, in a settlement of workers from West Bengal.

Residents of Palava’s apartment towers take an evening stroll on manicured grounds. As India’s middle class grows, upscale developments with high security and plentiful amenities are proliferating. Palava offers a more affordable middle-class lifestyle than Mumbai, about a 25-mile drive away.

A municipal worker waters a newly planted tree in Dholera Smart City, a development in Gujarat near the Gulf of Khambhat. A planned solar park there is raising concerns about how it might affect marshes used by migrating birds. Rising seas and flooding are already eroding the coastline.

Rakesh Kumar (standing) and his father, Selvadurai, fishermen from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, ply the waters of Pichavaram, the world’s second largest mangrove forest. The trees store a modest amount of carbon in the soil, but climate change is bringing less rainfall, variable salinity, and higher temperatures, which could decrease the forest’s carbon capacity.