Press Release | December 14, 2021

New Delhi: The 3rd Energy Finance Conference India (EFCI) 2021 began today (Dec 14) with a session on Adaptation, Loss and Damage – COP26 and the Money Trail. Presided by Prof Sudhir Chella Rajan, Indo German Centre for Sustainability, IIT- Madras, the speakers included Meena Raman of Third World Network, Gagan Sidhu of Centre for Energy Finance, CEEW and Nitin Sethi of The Reporters’ Collective.

EFCI, jointly organized by the Indo German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS), IIT- Madras and Centre for Financial Accountability, with Climate Trends as Knowledge Partner, is deliberating on the theme of “How Clean is Green Financing? Understanding the National and International Landscape, Investors & its Efficacy” with four sessions spread across 4 days from December 14-17, 2021.

“IGCS is very proud to be a co-sponsor of the Energy Finance Conference India with CFA for a third year in a row. India and the world are at the cusp of history, with reports coming out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stressing the need to reduce fossil fuel use down to zero in just a few decades to achieve climate stability. Finance, in all its dimensions and scales–local, national and transnational, as well as private and public–is an essential element of this transition, which must be fair and equitable. We are thrilled to have a stellar group of experts to raise these issues in our 4-day virtual conference and expect to learn a great deal from the lectures and discussions,” Prof Sudhir Chella Rajan, of IGCS, IIT-Madras said.

The national and international experts from across the spectrum will be sharing their thoughts in the conference. Some of them include, Mariel Vilella, Zero Waste- Europe, Rathin Roy, Overseas Development Institute, Lidy Nacpil, Asia Energy Network & APMDD, Soumya Datta, Friends of the Earth India and MAUSAM, Kalyani Menon-Sen, Gender at Work, Chandra Bhushan, iFOREST, Ajay Shah, Jindal Global Business School, Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh and others.

A new report Coal vs Renewables Financial Analysis 2020 was released at the conference. The report identifies PFC, and its subsidiary REC, as the sole state owned financial institutions that provided project financing to coal power projects in 2020. The fourth edition of Coal vs Renewable Financial Analysis, authored by Climate Trends and Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), found SBI was the leading financier of renewable energy projects in 2020.

“India came from the climate negotiations having made significant commitments to shift to renewable energy in the power sector. Changing the electricity sector will require adding a lot more renewables to the grid. Funding a transition of this scale will be a technological, policy and social challenge. The conference provides a platform to discuss and offer a connected view of the policy landscape in the country, as well as the need and mechanics to bring in investible capital and ensure that the transition to a new and cleaner energy mix is socially equitable,” Aarti Khosla of Climate Trends said.

The previous two conferences brought together experts from the industry, think tanks, banking and energy sector and CSOs to provide a platform for divergent views on energy finance, and thus an opportunity for an informed discussion.

“At a time when a lot of air-time is spent on Net-zero and demanding developed nations to pledge billions and trillions for climate financing, it is important for citizens to know what is behind these number games. Is what is promoted in the name of ‘green’ is ‘clean’? The sessions at this conference provide a space to interrogate the claims and critically look at issues related to climate crisis, which are critical for human survival,” Joe Athialy of Centre for Financial Accountability said.

For more details: https://www.cenfa.org/efci

Contact:

Kavita Kabeer – kavita@cenfa.org

Tel: 6364380283

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