A sustainable energy solution for a steadily developing country like India must strive to achieve the energy 'quadfecta': affordable, accessible, reliable, and clean.
Welcome to Indian Energy Quadfecta, a newsletter focused on all things decarbonization and climate change in the context of India. I am Sankalp Banerjee and I hope you will join me in this journey as I share thoughts, observations, and insights on specific topics.
Climate change, as many will know, is one of the world's most widely recognized 'wicked problems' - one that is naturally multi-faceted, contradictory, economically and socially complex, and very difficult to form consensus around. In light of this, it may appear puzzling to be writing a newsletter about climate change, a problem that is inherently global and interconnected, but just focused on one country. It's a fair point too: the earth and its troposphere could care less about whether carbon emissions originate from India, Italy, or Iceland, and concepts like 'per capita emissions' and 'nationally defined contributions (NDCs)' matter only to a limited extent in humanity's mission to limit catastrophic warming.
That said, I believe our individual decisions, and the decisions of individual countries, matter. In that context, while the fight against climate change is undoubtedly a global one, this broader war may well be won or lost in a few particularly significant battles. India - with 18% of the world's population and electricity demand that is projected to triple by 2050 - is poised to be one such battleground.
For India, like for any other country, climate change mitigation and decarbonization can never exist in a vacuum. Rather, a sustainable energy solution for a steadily developing country like India must necessarily strive to achieve the energy 'quadfecta': affordable, accessible, reliable, and clean. To achieve its climate ambitions while accounting for this quadfecta, India's path to climate change mitigation at scale will need much more than solar panels and windmills. It will involve every aspect of our lives: how we eat, how we ride to work, how we generate electricity, how we grow food, how we manufacture goods, how we travel, how we build buildings, and the list goes on.
Before we go further, let me share a little bit about me: I am originally from India (born in Mumbai, and grew up across India / China / the US) and have been fascinated with topics related to energy and sustainable infrastructure for many years in both academic and professional settings. Most recently, I have been focused on helping to evaluate, build, and scale energy and infrastructure businesses in private investing roles. For me, exploring India’s path to a sustainable economy strikes a personal note and I’m excited to share my thoughts, observations, and insights on a regular basis. Each edition of the Indian Energy Quadfecta will explore a specific topic related to decarbonization in India, including the good, the bad, the okay-for-now, and the really-not-okay!
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