The Next Leaps of India's Energy Transition| ft. Gauri Singh

Thank you.

And it's interesting to know how you're building these threads together and across so many different countries.

I'll start with India because in a way, India's signature of how renewable energy growth has happened, that the renewable energy can be deployed at an unprecedented scale, at the same time driving the costs down.

So I want to first understand from your perspective that how important was long-term policy signals, and clear national targets, which were ambitious then, which continue to be ambitious now, in creating an investor confidence.

So, let me put it like this, that the India story You know, what it really tells you is, of course, the experience is important, but what it really tells you is how ambition becomes policy, how policy then goes ahead and creates markets.

and how this dynamic between policy, markets, and the need for investments in grid storage, financing, and institution building then plays out as you move into a more advanced stage.

So in a sense, this is... extremely good example of the challenges that have been tackled at various stages of this growth.

And they have been tackled in a way that are very much customised.

to how the institutional capacities in India are, to what the status of the grid is, to what the status of the manufacturing is, and also the developers and the ecosystem around it.

So I think that is extremely important because In many ways, India has demonstrated that as access increased, or rather we achieved access in the last decade.

You know, this decade in India has all been about how do you meet the rising demand? How do you keep the power affordable? How do you reduce the import dependence and build domestic industries? bring in the the industries and get them to walk along to decarbonize as we move forward so uh and for all this to happen you know it goes without saying that the long-term policy signals are absolutely the key because uh you know what what uh What did happen as the Indian story unfolded was that there was a very clear visibility of what India wanted to do in the short term, but also in the long term.

So there were targets that were set, clear targets were set for 2020 and then 2022 and so on.

Now, just setting targets, many countries have done that.

it doesn't help we all know because these targets are of course critical to reduce that kind of uncertainty and to put our intent very make it very transparent and visible to the investors and to the developers but you know the the other signal that you're also giving through this is the signal that goes out to the manufacturers, to grid operators, to regulators, and to the financing institutions.

But also we need to be mindful that having a good policy, having clear targets, if it's not backed by very strong implementation plan, then it could lead to nothing.

Because all this needs to be translated into something that can bring a pipeline of projects that are ready to get deployed and understanding from the utilities which are ready to buy this power.

It did involve putting out some guarantees in the shape of very strong PPAs, but it wasn't just the PPAs.

It was also doing a back-end connect with who would pick up this kind of a supply.

So where would the demand come from and how would that get equitably distributed throughout the country? So what I'm trying to say is that If India today has achieved 50% of its cumulative installed electric power capacity from non-fossil fuels, and we achieved this last year, so almost five years ahead of the NDC target that we had given, it hasn't been without working on multiple fronts.

And it needed all of the power sector to come together in its various implementation, with all its implementation mechanisms, the regulators to come together, the financing institutions to come together.

And to be... able to now move from just a capacity target to more of a generation target.

Because even now, the generation from non-fossil fuels is about 30 percent.

If that generation has to be increased, You know, this is like it's going to be a step change.

So you can't keep doing more of the same.

And the policies around it, the implementation mechanisms, the institutional capacity all has to be rethought.