JLF 2024 | Awareness about climate change is increasing, but it’s still not enough: ReNew’s Sumant Sinha

Sumant Sinha, the founder, chairman and CEO of ReNew, the first Indian renewable energy company to be listed on NASDAQ, is at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Sinha has authored Fossil Free: Reimagining Clean Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World which explores the urgency, challenges, and opportunities of transitioning away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Read Also: World’s “Most Important” Organisms Are On The Move. Reason: Climate Change

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In an exclusive conversation with CNBC-TV18, on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Sinha talks about his latest release, the growing consciousness about climate change, and the need for more awareness.

 

 

About 15 years ago, I started looking at the area of climate change. It seemed like a very important issue. Back then, even though the temperature change had not occurred, and they were still the early days as far as awareness was there about climate change, I got the feeling that it was going to become one of the most important issues that we were dealing with as humanity. And that’s why I chose to get into the sector. Over the years, the interest level in climate change has increased dramatically. And now it’s something that everybody’s talking about, and we all need to get together and deal with it.

 

 

I think they are more conscious, but they need to be a lot more conscious.

 

 

See, the thing is, unfortunately, younger people have to get exposed to the whole climate change issue. I know that schools and colleges are teaching much more about it. We all are still facing the consequences of it in terms of pollution, weather changes, and so on. And I think that is something that the youth of today can observe around them and learn from.

 

What compelled me to write is the fact that not enough people know the problem. And not enough people know what’s happening about it, and what the solutions can be. And to the extent you were talking about the youth earlier, it is a book written to create awareness, whether it’s among the youth or anybody else because the solutions are there, they just have to be implemented. But most people are not aware of them.

 

 

Yeah, you know, now I think the world is recognised that climate change is a very important issue. And the way to solve it is by making the energy transition go as fast as possible. And every country in the world has to do the same thing. The countries that do it faster, will become market leaders, will become technology leaders. And that is the opportunity that India has and we are moving very rapidly in this area. Therefore there is an opportunity for us to become global market leaders.

 

 

I think we’ve done very well on the policy front more importantly than than anything else. There’s a strong intent on the part of the government to make sure India’s future growth of requirement of energy is met through renewable energy sources. Whether it’s by putting up huge solar farms, and wind farms, or whether it’s putting on rooftops, I think the government is moving forward. We’re developing a manufacturing industry as well. We are giving of course the various production-linked incentive schemes. We’ve come up with the National Green Hydrogen Mission. We are looking at battery installations. So there’s a whole host of things that the Indian government is doing right now. This is a sector where India can be one of the global leaders. We have a huge domestic economy, which is growing rapidly and we need to have cleaner solutions. And that itself offers us a tremendous market opportunity.