ABSTRACT India's coal‐dependent regions sit at the heart of a persistent Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) paradox: Despite powering the nation, many mining communities continue to face unreliable electricity, clean‐cooking shortfalls, and socioeconomic vulnerability across degraded post‐mining landscapes. Prior reviews largely treat renewable deployment, energy access, energy governance, and just‐transition governance as separate domains, leaving a limited SDG 7–aligned synthesis that integrates mine‐land repurposing potential with the institutional, financial, and equity constraints that shape outcomes in India's coal belt. To address this gap, this study provides a coal‐region‐specific, SDG 7–benchmarked evidence synthesis linking energy access within a unified just‐transition framework. A systematic narrative review was conducted following PRISMA 2020 guidance, screening 68 studies (2020–2025) alongside relevant policy datasets. Findings highlight major opportunities, including solar deployment on reclaimed mine lands (27.11 GW), pumped hydro storage (∼183 GW), biomass co‐firing, and mine methane recovery (54%), supported by financing instruments, such as the District Mineral Foundation (DMF). However, the binding constraints are predominantly institutional rather than technological—fragmented planning, regulatory and land‐related frictions, investment “bankability” gaps, limited workforce readiness, and weak community benefit‐sharing. On the basis of the synthesized evidence, the study advances a prioritized pathway for coal regions: scale mine‐land renewables and storage, mainstream methane utilization and efficiency measures, reorient DMF/CSR flows toward equity‐centered transition investments, and embed reliability‐adjusted SDG 7 indicators within coordinated national–state roadmaps to deliver measurable, socially inclusive, and durable energy transition outcomes.
Roy et al. (Mon,) studied this question.