The promising future for Indian climate tech

Over the next decade, India will double the size of its economy, and this trend is likely to sustain for subsequent decades. There is a real risk we will end up doubling emissions. While it is undisputedly true that we are responsible for a fraction of historical emissions or per capita emissions, the hard truth is that our poor, our health infrastructure, and our food systems will be unable to cope with the inevitable climate shocks.

One way that we can decouple growth - which is and should be non-negotiable – from emissions is through climate innovations including technology.

India has many of the foundational building blocks necessary to become a global hotspot for climate tech innovation. These include entrepreneurial talent, a startup ecosystem, a frugal engineering mindset and an obsession with delivering scale. We have done it before – like in bringing banking to hundreds of millions or implausibly cost-effective missions to the Moon or Mars.

How do we direct this potent force towards climate action?

The encouraging news is that there are multiple examples that one can take inspiration from. The Indian cement sector is regarded as amongst the greenest in the world. Partly because, the best Indian cement companies now have fly ash – waste product from thermal power plants – account for 80% of their raw material. Another shining illustration where India is globally competitive is in the EV space. Around 1.6 million electric vehicles were sold in the country last year - the majority of which were electric scooters and electric three-wheelers. Energy efficient light bulbs and ceiling fans now represent significant, profitable business segments.

There are a number of guiding principles that Indian innovators, business, policy makers and the engineering R&D community will be well served to consider.

In the agriculture value chain, which is characterised as production by masses as opposed to mass production, there is considerable business value that can be extracted through digital and data transformation. AgriStack – which is the food systems’ counterpart to IndiaStack, EdStack and HealthStack – is still relatively nascent and there are wide open spaces for data sciences. The specific areas include soil health, livestock productivity, farmer advisory and groundwater management. Given half the country remains dependent on the rural economy, this holds potential for public good, economic value, and environmental benefits.

One of the constraints that innovators and companies alike have experienced is interoperability being a barrier to scaling up. If everyone has to set up all the infrastructure they need independently, it is both inefficient and slow. Initiatives like the Beckn Protocol – which builds protocols that are open, decentralised, and interoperable – will allow an innovator of charging infrastructure or energy generation or any other areas to create solutions that can be accessible to all. This is the equivalent of the Unified Payment Interface, which rightfully gets major credit for the digital payments’ transformation in India. This again will require India’s engineering talent to step in and step up.

Energy and resource efficiency are not the most glamourous sides of climate innovation – but are arguably the most meaningful in terms of fastest and most tangible benefit to both planet and bottomline. Even as a giant energy transition to renewables is underway in India, renewables alone will not deliver our strategic objectives. There will be a considerable overlap of fossil fuels-based machinery in India’s stock and finding ways of driving more output per unit of fuel is an aspect which requires investment of engineering talent to extract those efficiencies.

India is going to have to address a particularly funny problem. Which is the fact that we don't spend enough on R&D as a nation. India spends about 0.6% of its GDP on R&D compared to 1.6% in other industrial countries, and only 40% of this is spent by the private sector, compared to 70% for other industrial nations.

For India to become Viksit Bharat, it must start investing at industrial nation averages on R&D. India can send a powerful signal and afford compelling incentive to achieve this by putting a green angle to subsequent phases of Production Linked Incentives, like by providing additional incentive for a predetermined list of greener processes. It could also have a Research Linked Incentive that specifically promotes R&D spend by corporate India and encourages deeper partnerships between industry & academia in India.

Climate change is indeed the crisis of the century. Climate change is equally the business opportunity of the century. Climate innovation and technology is an area where India’s formidable engineering prowess can build global leadership – delivering Indian solutions for the planet. May World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development be a day where we all think about the potential and embark determinedly on this journey!

(Hisham Mundol is Trustee, Environmental Defense India Foundation)

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)