35-by-35 Is My 2022 Mission. India Should Sign — With Firm Power

At COP31 in Antalya the presidency is asking countries to back "35-by-35": electricity at 35 percent of global final energy use by 2035, up from about a fifth. That is the same mission I urged New Delhi to run in 2022. India, at 55 percent non-fossil installed capacity five years ahead of target, can sign it and deliver it — but only with a firm-power annex covering nuclear, storage and grid capital.

The sentence I have waited four years for arrived in Antalya on Monday. COP31 president Murat Kurum put a "35-by-35 Global Electrification Pledge" on the table — electricity's share of global energy consumption raised to 35 percent by 2035 (Xinhua, 9 November 2026). Türkiye has made it the centre of the presidency's Action Agenda (New Energy Weekly, 9 November 2026).

I have wanted that sentence since 1 April 2022, when ET reported a plan for "a mission to enhance electrical energy penetration from 17% to 27% within the next 10 years". I wrote about it that week in "Mission Possible ( Failure is not an Option )", asking only that we close the loose ends: a smart meter in every home, appliance-level data, carbon credits flowing back to households. The world has now written the same mission, with thirteen years instead of ten.

India's ledger has moved since then. ET reported on 10 November 2026 that we crossed 55% non-fossil installed capacity by September 2026 — our 2030 target, five years early. That makes us the one large economy that can sign 35-by-35 and then deliver it.

So I would sign. But I would attach a firm-power annex, not a signature alone. The arithmetic:

• The IEA's Electricity 2026 report expects India's electricity demand to grow about 6.4 percent a year to 2030 — over 570 TWh in five years.
• In the IEA's faster-electrification scenario, fuel importers would spend more than $400 billion less on energy imports in 2035 than in 2025 (New Energy Weekly, 9 November 2026).
• Euronews, 9 November 2026, reporting Climate Action Tracker: current policies reach only 28 percent by 2035. Electrification must move four times faster.

That $400 billion is the rupee argument, the inflation argument and the climate argument in one figure. Simon Stiell's line at the opening plenary — that this year's fossil price shock is "spreading inflation like a cancer" — is not rhetoric. It is our household budget.

The fight over what counts as clean is already live. Germany's delegation head Heike Henn says joining requires the pledge's 1.5°C link to be "a clear path forward", and Berlin wants the extra power to be renewable; the EU has so far backed only "clean electrification" (Clean Energy Wire, 9 November 2026). Yet the text itself asks for "diverse and sustainable energy sources" and does not require low-carbon supply. That gap is exactly where India should stand.

My annex would carry three things:

1. Named firm capacity — nuclear, pumped hydro, battery storage — as a line item with dates, not an aspiration.
2. A grid capex number, because no data centre or induction stove ever connected to a promise.
3. Progress measured through the India Energy Stack, from meters rather than submissions — the architecture I described in "Electrifying India Energy Stack" (March 2026).

In Antalya, India also spoke for the Like Minded Developing Countries and "regretted" that trebling adaptation finance stayed off the agenda (ET, 10 November 2026). A firm-power annex priced in concessional finance answers both complaints at once.

Antalya may not adopt even this voluntary pledge by 20 November. But if it does, India should be first to sign — and first to ask what firm power signs with us.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
10 Nov 2026