Clean energy to flow through CIIE?

India’s ambition of producing 20 GW of clean energy by 2020 will find support from the ‘Renewable energy search’ of the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).

The ‘Renewable energy search’, which is currently screening entries among start-up ventures on clean energy business ideas, hosted delegates from the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE,) including former MNRE secretary V Subramanian and director of the Solar Energy Centre of MNRE, PC Pant, on Saturday.

“Management schools do not only supply manpower for establishing industries. They can do a lot of other work, too. We have views presentations by them to see how we can gain from these in the development of technology in the field,” Subramanian said.
The ‘Renewable energy search’ is an endeavour of the CIIE and MNRE to identify, encourage and incubate entrepreneurial ideas aimed at solving the energy crisis through the use of existing research on clean energy.

Talking about the start-up ventures that will be incubated in the CIIE, Subramanian said, “We would be giving them some grants. The idea is to enter an area of new energy. Unfortunately, in India, research and development has not received as much attention as it should. Now, we have a lot of youngster who are enthusiastic about technical research and work on new technologies.”

 “One of the proposals we saw today is how to make the supply chain for biomass a viable proposition in the business sense. We have all these biomass plants, and no one had thought about it,” he said.

Talking about the changing situation regarding global warming, he said, “We have to come up with new ideas. This is just not limited to new technologies, but people can also come up with business models with the existing technology.”

Commenting upon the government’s goals of clean energy, Subramanian said, “Right now, we have a disconnected system of around two GW. The government’s plan of churning out 20 GW by 2020 is far too ambitious. Even if it achieves 50 per cent of the target, I will be very happy.” He, however, said that finance is not an obstacle towards this goal. “Finance is not going to be a problem. The budget has never been a problem with the government.”