Earth Day 2025: Clean Energy Movement gives hope for our 'Pale Blue Dot'

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”

This iconic speech by planetary scientist Carl Sagan is taken from his book Pale Blue Dot. This “pale blue dot” is Earth. And every year, on April 22, Earth is celebrated.

This celebration, known as Earth Day, began in 1970. To this day, it remains the largest secular environmental movement in the world. Earth Day serves as a focal point for efforts to save the planet. Each year it highlights a different theme or issue to take action on.

This year’s theme is “Our Planet, Our Power” and it aims to triple renewable energy generation by 2030.

Renewable energy comes from natural sources that won’t run out — like the sun, wind and water. It uses the sun’s rays to generate electricity or harnesses the wind to spin large turbines.
Unlike coal or oil, renewable energy is clean and doesn’t harm the planet.

India has the capacity to produce 452.69 gigawatts of electricity.
A single gigawatt can power roughly 700,000 to 1 million homes — that’s more than a third of all households in Delhi.

Out of this total, 46.3 per cent currently comes from renewable sources such as the sun, wind, water and biomass.
Solar power is the largest contributor, with 90.76 GW, followed by wind at 47.36 GW, then hydropower, biopower and others.

Let’s take a closer look at the two largest renewable sources in India: solar and wind.

India has immense solar energy potential — around 5,000 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power millions of homes, schools and factories.
Solar energy has transformed rural lives — bringing clean electricity, reducing firewood use, improving health, creating jobs and boosting local businesses.
It plays a key role in India’s clean energy goals.

To support this, the government is setting up solar parks and ultra-mega projects with a target capacity of 40,000 megawatts.

India’s wind energy sector is also steadily expanding, backed by strong local companies and a manufacturing capacity of 18,000 megawatts per year, making it the fourth largest globally. The National Institute of Wind Energy has set up over 900 wind monitoring stations and mapped wind potential at various heights — estimating a capacity of 1,163.9 gigawatts at 150 metres, mostly across eight windy states.

But there's something we must start thinking about.
After about 30 years, solar panels degrade and need replacement.
In the future, India will have millions of old panels to dispose of. That’s why recycling them and recovering valuable materials like rare minerals is crucial.

India has introduced rules to ensure solar panel manufacturers and recyclers properly manage old panels.
The goal is to recycle 80 per cent of them by 2028-29, using safe and organised systems rather than informal, unsafe methods.

Similarly, 80 to 94 per cent of wind turbines can be recycled — including steel, aluminium and copper components.
The government also aims to source 50 per cent of all steel from recycling by 2047.

Clean energy is now widely recognised as a unifying force — transcending ideological boundaries and linking countries together.

By 2035, countries like the United States aim to meet their energy needs through renewables.
China currently leads the world in both solar and wind and Uruguay, in South America, generates 98 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources.

The global shift towards renewable energy is gaining pace and India is charting its own path, drawing from its biomass and other natural resources.

Fossil fuels remain a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
A shift to cleaner, renewable energy is not just an option — it’s the only way forward for a healthier, cleaner future on this pale blue dot we call home.