Cleantech, for an inclusive green future in India

Green economy paradigm:

1. It involves adoption of climate action that aligns with the development aspirations of the population and contributes to overall economic growth.
2. It provides an optimistic pathway to align development and environmental outcomes
   • Building a solar park or an e-vehicle charging station shall expand infrastructure aiding the developing economy while also furthering climate action.
   • Similarly, reviving millets helps in improving farm incomes in rain-fed areas while also making agriculture climate resilient. 
3. Cleantech solutions for livelihoods among the rural population.
   1. Solar dryers in Andhra Pradesh converts throwaway tomatoes into sun-dried ones.
   2. The biomass-powered cold storages in Maharashtra helps farmers to sell lemons with increased shelf-life and helps to make a gain of ~3-5 times of that of the original price.
   3. Solar silk reeling machines reducing fatiguing work for the thigh-reelers and gain double their income in Odisha.

Advantages of Green economy Transition:

1. With 120 million farmers and 34 million microenterprises in India’s rural economy, the problem of unreliable electricity access and dependence on expensive and imported diesel can be addressed by cleantech solutions.
   • Helps reduce its diesel imports as they are powered by renewable energy
   • Can avoid the loss of perishable food
   • Provides an investment opportunity of $50 billion for investors and financiers and thus enhances rural livelihood opportunities.
2. Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW): 12 such cleantech solutions have the potential to impact about 16% of the rural population.

Steps to scale up the benefit-utilization of Clean Technology:

1. Existing government programmes supporting livelihoods has to be leveraged. For instance,
   1. PM MUDRA yojana which provides collateral-free loans for microenterprises can provide impetus for adoption of cleantech solutions.
   2. Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM-FME) scheme that encourages adoption of technology by micro food enterprises, can be used to support technologies such as solar dryer, or solar grain mill among others.
   3. Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) can be mobilised for adopting solar refrigerators and dryers for fishing communities.
   4. The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund can leverage the adoption of biomass-powered cold storage.
2. Large-scale financing of cleantech solutions is required.
   1. Supporting bankers’ capacity on credit assessment for cleantech as it is a booming field where banks may not be able to make an informed assessment based on past experiences.
   2. Partial guarantees have to be offered by the govt. in the initial stages of the market of cleantech in order to hedge their risks.
   3. Active engagement with financiers to structure loan products to align them with the cash flow scenarios of users.
3.  Multi-actor partnerships have to enabled.
   1. The partnerships shall involve technology innovators, manufacturers, distributors and service providers, financiers, and market-linkage players to create a holistic ecosystem to address problems of,
      1.  Cleantech manufacturers faces challenges of
         • low product awareness among customers
         • High customer acquisition cost as users need to touch and feel these products before adoption
         • Low density of customers for products in a given area.
      2. Users faces challenges of
         • Limited after-sales service
         • Market linkage of the final processed products
   2. Holistic ecosystem to enable cleantech to impact rural livelihoods at scale.

India needs to focus on cleantech for livelihoods and jobs, especially in rural areas to attain an inclusive green future, given its massive ambitions for a clean and green future.