Business Leadership for Energy Sustainability in India

TERI-BCSD hosted a dialogue titled 'Business Leadership for Energy Sustainability in India' in New Delhi on 1 July 2014. The event deliberated upon the criticality of energy for an equitable growth and identified removal of investment barriers, lowering of investment risk and increased returns as primary elements to improve the investment climate in the sector.

The inaugural address was delivered by Mr Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, TERI-BCSD, upon which the house was declared open for discussion by the chair Ambassador Ajai Malhotra. In his opening speech Ambassador Malhotra iterated the criticality of energy for equitable growth. He identified removal of investment barriers, lowering of investment risk, and increased returns as primary elements to improve the investment climate in the sector. Our esteemed panellists, Mr Arup Ghosh (Chief Technical Officer, Tata Power) and Mr Curt Hutchins (President, APAC, Eaton Technologies) spoke about the immense growth prospects for renewable energy in India given its renewed confidence in investment in the environment. The panel highlighted the need for technical and business collaboration at various levels. The discussion from here onwards, focused around three most crucial material barriers that scaling up of renewable energy technologies are facing in today’s energy scenario. These were listed out to be Investment Barriers, Investment Risks, and Return on Investments. It was mutually agreed upon that businesses need to help governments in shaping policies that encourage investments in the area of renewable energy. Partnerships amongst different businesses were also identified as an important strategy to drive sustainable development in the nation. The short-, medium-, and long-term goals of a policy need to be identified for an effective implementation of the policy. A powerful way in which businesses could drive policymaking within the government was educating the broader audience about the purpose of policymaking.