India Programme - Green Leadership: Developing a business Alliance to scale up renewable energy and energy efficiency adoption

Tender description

India's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) lay the pathway for a transition to a low-carbon future in alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement whilst meeting India's developmental imperatives. The three pillars of India's NDCs comprise - (i) Reduction in emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35% by 2030 from 2005 levels; (ii) Increase the share of non-fossil fuel-based electricity to 40% by 2030; and (iii) creation of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon sink by 2030. Action by government alone will not be sufficient to achieve India's climate targets. Leadership by businesses and industry will also need to play an important complementary role. Businesses in India are increasingly aligning with Paris climate goals by getting more proactive in deploying low-carbon initiatives - either as a part of voluntary measures, core business operations, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or under various government schemes such as Performance-Achieve-Trade (PAT). Companies are committing to globally acclaimed industry-led initiatives/coalitions that build business leadership in low-carbon areas such as renewable energy adoption, energy efficiency, energy productivity, resilient supply chains, and internal carbon pricing, amongst others. Existing analysis of the barriers and solutions to scaling up corporate action on renewable energy and energy efficiency in India (including studies supported by the UK) concludes that: (i) Present-day industry-led coalitions in India are insufficient to increase corporate action at the scale required to help India meet its climate targets. (ii) Challenges that limit effective action by coalitions include patchy policy/regulatory landscape in states, limited convening power to expand the pool of interested businesses, limited engagement with policy/regulatory bodies in states, limited efforts to engage MSMEs, information asymmetry, gaps in quality technology and service providers for PAT industries. (iii) The most successful initiatives are comprehensive, combine the strengths of varied stakeholders, and have a robust governance structure that works to deliver targeted results. For example ten organisations joined forces to launch the Clean Energy Access Network (CLEAN), which has emerged as one of the most credible coalitions to support, unify and grow the off-grid renewable energy sector in India. The India GHG inventory (partnership between WRI, CEEW, and TERI) is another example of one such successful platform. Building on existing findings, the British High Commission will engage a supplier to bring together an alliance that combines and channels the strengths of existing industry-led coalitions together with think tanks and government. The project will also generate a detailed business plan for the alliance, clearly articulating the institutional set up, governance structure, funding requirement (if any), and broad set of interventions (at the central level in priority states of UK Energy techni