Lately we’ve had a mixed bag in terms of India’s energy outlook. On the one hand, the country appears to be a terrific environment for green energy investment, and has made bold predictions about its plans for cutting emissions. On the other, its power minister, Piyush Goyal, recently said that India shouldn’t feel obliged to stop burning coal and that “it’s America and the western world that has to first stop polluting.”

Now, India is canceling close to 14 gigawatts’ worth of new coal-fired power plants, and warning that existing plants totaling another 8.6 gigawatts in generation capacity could soon be too expensive to keep running. What’s going on?

Put simply, India has a huge energy challenge on its hands. As we said in “India’s Energy Crisis,” our cover story from the November/December 2015 issue:

India is attempting to do something no nation has ever done: build a modern industrialized economy, and bring light and power to its entire population, without dramatically increasing carbon emissions. Simply to keep up with rising demand for electricity, it must add around 15 gigawatts each year over the next 30 years.

So the seemingly contradictory messages make sense in the context of the overall need for energy going forward: India is going to need to burn a lot more coal and build out tons of new solar and wind energy capacity to meet future demand.