‘Empowering businesses that catalyse energy transition pathways must for sustainable development goals’

 The global search for sustainable solutions that power economic development while addressing the climate crisis has been led by passionate entrepreneurs and scholars who strive to develop and implement innovative ideas.

The transition from traditional sources to cleaner energies has never been more urgent. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the share of renewable energy in global electricity generation increased from 16.6 per cent in 2010 to 27.7 per cent in 2020. While this represents progress, it falls short of the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario, which calls for a 50 per cent share of renewable energy in electricity generation by 2030.

In fact, The World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index, which tracks the progress of countries towards clean energy, found that no country is on track to achieve a fully sustainable energy system by 2030. The top-performing countries on the index still have a long way to go to achieve their targets.

To accelerate our progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs), we must empower innovators with unique ideas to create and build businesses that catalyse energy transition pathways in India and worldwide. The year 2030 also serves as the target year, as announced at CoP26, for the installation of 500 gigawatts of clean energy and the reduction of carbon emissions by 45 per cent in India.

While there are nurturing opportunities available to startups, there are critical gaps – technical, financial and regulatory – that need to be addressed to achieve long-term replicable solutions at scale.