Rooftop Freedom: Developing Nations' Tryst with Solar| ft. Sudarshan Varadhan

Yeah, I'm listening to all these stories and it makes you think about all these wars among nations that are happening because of conventional energy supply chain, where these energy supply chains are either the core reason or the corollary among this war.

And then there is this other side where, you know, all these renewable energy sources are are kind of helping citizens to deal with either the aftermath of an internal war or external strife, which has impacted their economic development, their energy access, etc.

So it's very interesting, you know, what kind of solution renewable energy sources could provide beyond just energy access.

It gives you energy independence.

It makes you get hold of what your energy needs are.

So quite interesting.

And if we want one were to compare these two developments that are happening, I'd rely on you to do that someday.

I'll go back to the energy, the underlying conditions that you mentioned.

You know, you talked about Sri Lanka.

There's some similar stuff now happening in Bangladesh as well.

you know, you have covered all these countries and, you know, apart from civil war and transmission grid, shaky grid, etc.

How has the supply chain developed? China has come up several times while you were talking.

The reason I ask is that you mentioned Australia, Germany was also one of the champion nations of DRE through their flagship energy wind program, etc.

But this was all led by policy.

So the government was taking care of the solar panels, government was taking care of installation etc but when it is a civilian movement uh how does the market shapes up in countries like that china you definitely mentioned but how did the supply chain come come to be about

OK, that's a very interesting question.

And that will take me down a route for which I'll also have to tap into the earlier answer I gave and probably digress into some of my other geographies.

So right now, what's happening is that I mentioned these three conditions.

And these three conditions were all before the Iran war.

I mean, the US-Israeli war with Iran took place.

Now, it can be argued that pretty much most of the world is facing the conditions, one of these three conditions.

I mean, we have seen power prices go up in non-regulated markets like the Philippines.

We have seen it go up in Thailand.

Thailand's really struggling.

So even in regulated markets, I mean, just for people who are not fully tuned into this, if I were to explain this, a regulated market is where You subsidize prices or the government artificially controls prices instead of just passing on the prices to you.