Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri, held the first ministerial meeting of the newly revitalized U.S.-India Strategic Clean Energy Partnership on September 9, 2021.  This effort builds on decades of energy cooperation between the two countries.  Under the Biden Administration and Prime Minister Modi’s Government, it will enhance its focus on clean energy and decarbonization while strengthening workstreams on energy security and access.  Below is the Joint Statement released by the U.S. and India on the occasion of this meeting.

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:

• Modernizing the power sector: Strengthen the electric grid to support large-scale integration of renewables, including through smart grids, energy storage, flexible resources, and distributed energy resources, and ensure reliable and resilient grid operations.
• Enhancing energy efficiency and conservation: Promote super-efficient appliances, smart, energy efficient buildings, and robust energy management systems in the industrial sector.
• Advancing renewable energy development and deployment: Support deployment of affordable, clean, reliable, and sustainable energy technologies and support India in achieving its goal of installing 450GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030.
• Decarbonizing the energy sector and end-use sectors: Decarbonize across the energy sector and in end-uses through electrification and deployment of emerging technologies and alternative fuels such as hydrogen, bioenergy, waste-to-energy, and carbon capture, utilization and storage, including through the newly launched Emerging Fuels Pillar. Advance collaborative efforts through public-private partnerships to help scale and deploy emerging technologies and alternative fuels.
• Demonstrating and scaling technology solutions: Drive technical assistance, innovation, and private sector support to large-scale demonstration projects to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors like steel, cement, and chemicals.
• Ensuring responsible oil & gas development: Reduce consumption of high-polluting fuels and greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain, advance decarbonization of the sector through emerging clean energy and methane abatement technologies, including through the revamped industry-led U.S.-India Low Emissions Gas Task Force. Encourage technological collaboration, responsible trade and investment practices. Share best practices for operation and maintenance of strategic petroleum reserves.
• Promoting sustainable and inclusive growth: Improve inclusive and sustainable economic growth through low-carbon pathways by enhancing co-operation in the areas of energy data management and standardization of definitions, deployment of low carbon technologies and study on just transition in the coal sector.
• Advancing clean energy research and development: Continue joint R&D on disruptive clean energy technologies—particularly for hard-to-decarbonize sectors.
• Promoting civil nuclear power as a net-zero solution: Promote nuclear power, and advance civil nuclear R&D, as a zero-emission energy source for addressing growing energy demand.
• Facilitating investment to accelerate a clean energy transition: Improve the investment climate through policy and regulatory support, the sharing of best practices, and increased private sector engagement to scale and deploy technology and accelerate a clean energy transition.
• Ensure a just energy transition: Identify opportunities for job creation and skills building for both countries, particularly for communities most impacted, to ensure a just energy transition.

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.”