INDIA

Grid reliability and quality remains a challenge for millions of people in rural Indian communities.

As a pivotal contributor to the global energy transition, India represents one of GEAPP’s highest priority markets. India has ambitious climate goals, declaring at COP26 its intention to become carbon neutral by 2070. Pathways to the achievement of this goal include: enabling a green economy, accelerating the increase in renewables and storage, enhancing energy efficiency, and the digitization of the energy sector.

The government’s vision is to make India the global leader in creating an ecosystem that serves its sustainability development goals. GEAPP seeks to complement and activate this vision. Key GEAPP interventions include:

• Facilitating India’s start-up network to address critical clean energy barriers
• Developing a resource center for energy efficiency that will enable a global scale up
• Digitization of the grid
• Driving climate finance by catalyzing investments in sectors including decentralized solar and grid scale renewables
• Supporting India’s Long-Term Low Emissions Growth Strategy aligning with the 2070 net-zero commitments
• Facilitating low carbon transition pathways in key economic sectors such as the Indian Railways to help achieve their 2030 commitments
• Driving innovation in clean energy operations

Strategic Pillars of GEAPP in India

GEAPP’s activities in India are collected and coordinated around four pillars of activity:

Pillar 1: The Green Tech Moment: Enabling the Energy Revolution in India

• Resolving existing policy and regulatory bottlenecks to wind and solar energy adoption and integration
• Achieving the right policy mix for accelerating e-mobility
• Enabling a green hydrogen economy in India
• Building consensus around the role and potential of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS)
• Strengthening energy and resource efficiency programs
• DISCOM reform
• Grid infrastructure and integration of renewable power
• Role of Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprises as a key employment provider in the clean energy economy

Pillar 2: Bridging the Finance Gap: Innovative Funding Models for the Clean Energy Transition

• Leveraging innovative financial models and instruments such as green and sustainability linked bonds, pay for success model, blended finance, and risk guarantees
• Financing resilience and adaptation
• Financing responsible retirement of polluting assets
• Role of central banks and monetary policy
• Developing an effective carbon trading market
• Defining the contours of an India-specific green taxonomy
• Greening the financial system by strengthening disclosures and risk management
• Strengthening institutional capacities to build a pipeline of shovel ready projects

Pillar 3: Green Development Pathways

• Techno-economic-social models and plans for economy-wide energy transition
• Identifying newer employment pathways and reskilling needs for coal workers
• Identifying ways to maximize synergies between the energy transition and the 2030 SDG agenda
• Identifying the contours of a green industrial policy for sustained economic growth
• Identifying alternate government revenue sources from the green energy transition to sustain development spending
• Engaging communities in the transition

Pillar 4: Delivering and Building on the USD100 billion Commitment

• Reforming MDBs to enable a greater flow of climate finance to emerging economies
• Leveraging India’s G20 presidency to enable greater international cooperation for climate action in emerging economies
• Role of philanthropy
• Role of climate clubs
• Strengthening the role of One Sun, One World, One Grid (OSOWOG) under the umbrella of the International Solar Alliance (ISA)
• Ensuring interoperable taxonomies and standardization of metrices
• Enabling newer platforms for greater technology transfer and capacity building support