Accelerating Clean Energy in India

Accelerating Clean Energy, or ACE, is WRI India’s flagship annual event where fresh insights into ongoing and emerging research streams on global energy transitions, and their implications on India, would be presented and discussed. ACE would be convening amidst fears that pockets of Western Europe might face energy poverty this winter for the first time since the Second World War, accelerating efforts to mainstream non-fossil fuel-based energy globally.

Some of the emerging themes that would be discussed at ACE include, rapid advancements in offshore wind technology, enabling it to become cheaper, and possibly viable for larger swathes of global populations. In India, the waters off the coasts of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu alone are expected to hold over 70 GW of wind energy capacities. WRI India’s research, and those of its partners, on pathways to scale offshore wind, as rapidly as solar, within the Indian context would be discussed.

Financing alternatives to fossil fuel has long been a challenge, but green taxonomies, and central bank directives to the entities they govern are beginning to change lending practices globally. In India, expanding access to electricity into sectors like agriculture, fisheries and allied activities has received much attention, but financing these new technologies, broadly under the rubric of Decentralized Renewable Energy, would require a multi-pronged approach of public and private financing. ACE would facilitate a discussion on this as well.

We would also discuss how the Association of Renewable Energy Agencies of States, or AREAS, could better serve the new and fast maturing renewables ecosystem in India. AREAS was registered as a society under the patronage of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy almost a decade ago, when nascent renewable energy (RE) technologies were being piloted across the country in diverse settings. Much has changed since, and the needs of the RE sector has rapidly evolved as well, requiring a shift in gear on state-support,

In its third edition after a break during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, we at WRI India’s Energy Program, are looking forward to these discussions and much more, to ensure India achieves its ambitious goals of carbon neutrality by 2070 and lives up to its pledges on renewables and Sustainable Development Goals.

SPEAKERS

Vandana Kumar, IAS, Additional Secretary, Minister of New and Renewable Energy
Sudhendu J Sinha, Adviser (Infrastructure Connectivity, Transport and Electric Mobility), NITI Aayog
Raghav G, Senior Manager, Investment Promotion, Guidance Tamil Nadu
Aarti Khosla, Founder and Director, Climate Trends
Jarnail Singh, Director, MacArthur Foundation India
Dr. Ashwini K Swain, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Dr. Archana Walia, India Director, Clean Air Asia
Poonam Sandhu, India Team Lead, Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC)
Narendra Nath Veluri, IFS, CEO, Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT)
D.S. Das, Joint Director, Tripura Renewable Energy Development Agency (TREDA)
Shweta Kulkarni, Researcher, Prayas (Energy Group)
Dr. Binu Francis, Secretary, Corporation of Thiruvananthapuram
Shirish Sinha, Director – Climate, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF)
Mili Majumdar, Managing Director, Green Building Certification Institute
Dr. Umamaheshwaran Rajasekar, Head, Climate Centre for Cities, National Institution of Urban Affairs & Chair, Urban Resilience Unit
Kaustabh Phadke, General Manager & Country Head, Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA)
Neha Verma, Director, Ministry of Steel
Shantanu Srivastava, Energy Finance Analyst, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA)
Dr. Saon Roy, Professor, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
Jayant Prasad, Executive Director, cKers Finance
Anubha Prasad, General Manager, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI)
Namita Vikas, Founder & Managing Director, auctusESG LLP
Akshima Ghate, Managing Director, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) India
Sunil Sharma, Deputy General Manager, Sustainability & Cleantech, BSES Yamuna Power Limited (BYPL)
Matthijs Kok, Project leader/advisor Electric Transport and Charging Infrastructure, Municipality of Utrecht, Netherlands
Dr. Maria Xylia, Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
Divya Sharma, India Executive Director, Climate Group
Vidya Soundarajan, Director Ecological Footprint, WWF- India
Arivudai Nambi, Director, Climate Resilience Practise, WRI India
Bharath Jairaj, Executive Director, Energy, WRI India
Dr. Madhu Verma, Chief Economist, WRI India
Ashim Roy, Lead, Energy Finance, Energy, WRI India
Tirthankar Mandal, Head, Energy Policy, Energy, WRI India
Vaisakh Kumar, Project Associate, Energy, WRI India
Kajol, Senior Manager, Energy, WRI India
Niharika Tagotra, Senior Research Specialist, WRI India
Dhilon Subramanian, Manager, Energy Program, WRI India
Deepak Tewari, Research Fellow, WRI India
Akansha Saklani, Manager, WRI India