Discussion | Scaling of RE in India – What’s real, what’s missing?

Friday, November 10, 2017

9:00 pm - 10:30 pm IST

Brookings India

No. 6, Second Floor, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg (Near British School)
New Delhi, DC
110021

Content from the Brookings Institution India Center is now archived. After seven years of an impactful partnership, as of September 11, 2020, Brookings India is now the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, an independent public policy institution based in India.

India has ambitious RE targets of 175 GW, which are now less than 5 years away. Where are we today? What’s missing, especially thinking at a systems level? Is finance the missing link? Are there lessons from other countries relevant for India?

Panelists:

Pawan Agrawal (President, YES Bank)
Gagan Sidhu (former CFO of GMR RE Ltd)
David Victor (Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. and Professor, UCSD)
Rahul Tongia (Brookings India) – Moderator

Profiles

Pawan Agrawal is President (corporate finance) at YES Bank, one of India’s leading green lender. He specialises in Project Finance, Structured Finance and Corporate Finance, and was a key contributor to the Clean Energy Finance Forum’s report on finance for scaling RE, especially the Working Group on Domestic Capital.

David Victor is a globally recognized expert on issues of climate change and clean energy, focusing on institutional and political economy challenges in national and international policy. He leads the energy and climate change group at the Brookings Institution and is also a Professor of International Relations at UC San Diego, where he is the Director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR).

Gagan Sidhu is a Renewable Energy Finance & Investment Banking professional. He currently advises several companies in the Indian solar space in both the distribution as well as utility scale segments. Sidhu was previously CFO for Renewables at GMR Group, a leading Indian Infrastructure developer.

Rahul Tongia is a Fellow with Brookings India, and leads the energy and sustainability group at Brookings India. His work focuses on technology and policy, especially for sustainable development. Tongia is also an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and was the founder cum technical advisor for the Government of India’s Smart Grid Task Force.

This event is followed by a discussion on Climate Change: India, the US, and beyond in the late 2017 World.