The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted the Flagship Seminar on the topic “From grey to green: Net-zero transition opportunities for India” based on McKinsey & Company’s report, presented by Rajat Gupta, on April 6, 6:00–7:30 PM (IST).

About the event:

The development of a net-zero emission economy is the defining business trend of the age, uniting the desire to build back better from the COVID-19 crisis and pursue sustainable development to avert a climate catastrophe. Can the net-zero equation be solved by 2050? How can Indian businesses define an effective net-zero program for the next few years? And what will it take for India as the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions to get there? At this Flagship Seminar, we discuss:

1. Why the net-zero equation has not closed yet
2. The levers that will drive decarbonization for India
3. How Indian companies are rising to the challenge to reach net-zero emissions and opportunities for value creation

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9616486178460/WN_MzM501vJSD66dOluUE2pYA

Discussants: 

• Rajat Gupta is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company’s Mumbai office. Since joining McKinsey in 1992, he has taken on several critical roles at the firm, from leading the energy and materials sector in Asia to helming various high profile, digital-first operational transformations, as well as spearheading the Sustainability Practice in Asia. He helped set up India’s National Solar Mission, often considered to be one of the country’s biggest contributions to the decarbonization movement. 
  Rajat has worked with leading companies in the metals, chemical, infrastructure, mining, power, oil, and telecommunications sectors. He brings expertise in operational transformations and change programs with a special focus on digital enablement. Recently, he led the global build-out of McKinsey Digital for the energy and materials sector, and in the process, directly helped clients become World Economic Forum digital industry 4.0 lighthouses.
   
• Vaibhav Chaturvedi is a Fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW)- one of Asia’s leading think tanks in the climate space- and leads CEEW’s low carbon pathways research. His expertise is in modeling long-term futures for energy and emissions. His role focuses on developing a modeling ecosystem in India, and informing national and state-level energy and climate policy. He has published extensively in top journals of energy and climate policy, is currently the Review Editor of IPCC AR6 WGIII Chapter 3, co-chair of the Mitigation Working Group of the Independent Global Stocktake Process (iGST), a member of the Advisory/Editorial Board of journals Energy Policy and Energy and Climate Change, and is/ has been a part of various GoI committees and groups on India’s energy and climate policy. His recent work includes modeling for informing India’s net-zero target and sectoral strategies, and modeling state-level energy and emission scenarios for India among other things. 

• Rahul Tongia is a Senior Fellow with CSEP in New Delhi, where his work focuses on technology and policy, especially for sustainable development. He leads the Energy, Natural Resources, and Sustainability group at CSEP, and is also active in broader issues of technology. His work spans the entire gamut of energy and electricity, with a focus on supply options including renewable energy (covering finance, grid integration, etc.); smart grids, which use innovative information and communications technology to improve management of the electric utility grid; issues of access and quality; and broader issues of reforms and regulations, including electricity pricing. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and was the founding Technical Advisor for the Government of India’s Smart Grid Task Force. Rahul Tongia is also a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. 

• Swati Dsouza is the India lead analyst and coordinator for the International Energy Agency (IEA). She is also associated with IEEFA where she is setting up the research on natural gas and transport. Swati has over 8 years of energy sector experience focused on challenges to the fossil fuel transition in emerging economies. Her research lies at the intersection of energy transition and climate policy. Previously, Swati set up and led the climate programme at National Foundation for India (NFI) with a focus on rural and marginalized communities. She led a study that examined the extent of coal dependency across coal mining, transport, power, iron and steel, and brick sectors, at the national level and in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. Prior to NFI, Swati was with at Brookings India (now CSEP), where she managed the book project on “The Next Stop: Natural gas and India’s journey to a clean energy future” which put together a roadmap to increase gas consumption in India. Swati was also associated with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) where she led the research on fossil fuels and transitions in India’s electricity sector to renewable energy.

• Indu K Murthy heads Climate, Environment and Sustainability, at CSTEP. She has worked as a Consultant Scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Her areas of interest include climate change vulnerability, land-based mitigation, and adaptation/resilience building or climate-proofing development to climate change.  She is an expert with the UNFCCC Roster of Experts for India (for GHG Inventory), and a member of the REDD+ Cell constituted by the Government of Karnataka.  She completed her PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from Pondicherry University and has specialized in Forestry and Environment from M S University, Baroda.

Moderator: 

• Montek Singh Ahluwalia is a Distinguished Fellow at CSEP and has been a notable figure in Indian economic reforms from the early 1980s onwards. He has previously served as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, and as the first director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF. He has written extensively on various aspects of development economics and is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award for public service. He is the author of “Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years (2020)”. 

Please contact Monica Sharma for general inquiries Trishna Wahengbam for media inquiries.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.