09/09/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/09/2021 09:11
In the face of the climate related threat, the United States and India are committed to accelerating the development and deployment of clean energy solutions. Today, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Puri co-chaired the virtual launch of the revamped U.S.-India Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP) to advance the climate and clean energy goals of both countries.
This follows the launch of the U.S.-India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership announced by President Biden and Prime Minister Modi at the April Leaders Summit on Climate, which recognized the importance of accelerating climate action in the decisive decade ahead. The Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP), together with a complementary Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue under the Agenda 2030 Partnership - to be launched on September 13 - builds upon our longstanding and productive bilateral energy dialogue that advanced energy security and innovation. The revitalized SCEP places greater emphasis on electrification and decarbonization of processes and end uses, scaling up and accelerating deployment of emerging clean energy technologies, and finding solutions for hard-to-decarbonize sectors.
Under the SCEP, the United States and India agreed to collaborate across five pillars: (1) Power and Energy Efficiency; (2) Renewable Energy; (3) Responsible Oil and Gas; (4) Sustainable Growth; and (5) Emerging Fuels. Alongside these technical pillars, the sides agreed to continue cutting edge research and development through the longstanding U.S.-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy-Research (PACE-R), prioritizing research on emerging clean energy technologies. In addition, the United States and India will continue to advance innovation in civil nuclear power as a net-zero solution through different collaborative programs including the longstanding Civil Nuclear Energy Working Group (CNEWG). The two countries will also engage the private sector and other stakeholders across the technical areas to help deploy clean technologies to accelerate a clean energy transition.
Clean Energy Priorities
The United States and India announced a number of recent achievements and realigned priorities for collaboration to advance climate and clean energy goals under the SCEP, including:
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm commented, 'We are excited to work with our partners in India to revitalize and accelerate our clean energy efforts through technology innovation and public private partnerships. Working together, we will deploy key technical solutions to enable sustainable clean energy growth while mitigating climate change impacts, realizing the vision laid out by President Biden and Prime Minister Modi under the U.S.-India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership.'
Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Puri commented, 'We will intensify efforts to take advantage of the complementarities of both the countries - advanced U.S. technologies and rapidly growing India's energy market, for a win-win situation. Our collective efforts will focus on developing a cleaner energy roadmap with low carbon pathways.'