India's Clean Energy Future - Key Leapfrogging Opportunities

Given rising incomes and urbanization, India’s energy demand is projected to quadruple over the next two decades and is projected to be the largest contributor to the addition in the global energy demand. In India, while this presents a host of challenges ranging from energy supply reliability to rising greenhouse gas emissions, this also presents a large opportunity to leapfrog to a clean and smart energy future. In fact, given the local environmental problems, constraints on fossil fuel availability, and falling costs of clean energy technologies, there is significant political interest and commitment for aggressive clean energy policies. This talk will give an overview of some of the core institutional issues in India’s energy sector and present a few leapfrogging clean energy opportunities that can potentially address such core problems and avoid significant greenhouse gas emissions. 

Speaker: Nikit Abhyankar, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs