Flagship event of the Chamber to focus on ‘clean and smart’ power for India
28th August, Friday: The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCC&I) is organising the eighth edition of its annual flagship event, ‘The Environment and Energy Conclave’, at the ITC Sonar. This is an international forum for climate change mitigation and business response, and is the preferred forum for discussing environmental and climate challenges, as well as sharing thoughts, ideas, and best practices. The Conclave brings together corporates, government officials, social activists, NGOs and academia on a common platform.
This year, the Conclave takes inspiration from the Government of India’s “Swachh Bharat” (Clean India) mission. The driving objective behind the programme is to bring on board the latest developments in the country both in the policy realm as well as in the investment and operational areas to realise ‘Clean and Smart’ power for India.
The Conclave is held in the background of energy being one of the drivers of a growing economy like India. It is an essential building block of economic development. The Indian power sector, which is critical for the nation’s growth, is still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels. Apart from increasing generation from renewables, ensuring fuel linkages and new technologies / best practices in coal mining, technological upgrades in power generation, transmission and distribution, focusing on smart grids and the likes, the need is to ensure collective R&D effort and collaboration in the direction of having a clean energy path. Investments from G20 nations, setting up a global virtual centre for clean energy research and development and focusing on energy conservation across the board are being prioritized.
The Inaugural Session of the Conclave will be attended by: Shri Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, Government of India; Shri Upendra Tripathy, IAS, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India; Shri Manish Gupta, Hon’ble Minister-in-Charge, Power & Non-Conventional Energy Sources, Government of West Bengal; Dr. Ajay Mathur, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficiency; Dr. Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment (for Valedictory Session).among others.
“India is endowed with vast renewable energy resources including wind, solar, biomass and small hydro. We need to develop the available renewable energy to meet growing energy needs and ensure power security,” said Dr. Alok Roy, President, BCC&I. “The Chamber has been working extensively with overseas partners representing overseas governments in addressing the development of clean technology.”
India is a country with a rural population of over 800 million directly depending on climate sensitive sectors (agriculture, forests and fisheries) and natural resources (water, biodiversity, coastal zones, etc.) for their livelihoods. The potential impacts of climate change are often diverse and the immediate need to address these adverse impacts is widely recognised. Similarly, different regions and have differential vulnerabilities to climate change; therefore, different approaches need to be applied that are context and region-specific. While traditionally, climate change experts have focused on mitigation measures, adaptation measures have also been acknowledged of late as effective and equitable means to deal with climate change impacts. It has been increasingly recognised that a joint approach addressing the issues of adaptation and mitigation together is the most appropriate one for countries like India with high dependence on coal and abundance of GHG emissions while per capita emission is still very low.