Natural gas to drive green and sustainable developments in India

The per capita primary energy consumption in India has been increasing and there is a great scope for growth to reach somewhere closer to the leading economies such as the United States, Russia, and China. India’s primary energy consumption is still dominated by coal with 54.5 % followed by oil (29.5 %), natural gas (7.8 %), hydro (5 %), renewables (2 %), and nuclear (1.2 %). India being one of the leading emerging economies requires plenty of energy to keep the pace of its economic growth. India’s economic development should be driven by green energy, with desirable level of environment protection and ecological preservation. Along with the renewable sources of energy, natural gas is considered to be the fuel for green and sustainable developments in India. The outcomes of green economy are green production, green marketing, green transport, green housing, green electricity, and green consumption. Current scenario suggests that natural gas could be one of the most preferred greener fuel by 2030 in India. Some of the enabling factors likely to drive gas based sustainable economy in India are: higher domestic production, import of equity gas, import of relatively cheaper shale gas (in the form of LNG) from the USA, import of dry gas through pipeline from central Asia, development of regasification infrastructure in India, and development of fully functional national gas grid. © 2015, Springer India.