Earlier this week in New Delhi, India, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall announced that the Department of Energy (DOE) will assign an energy attaché to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to support the Department’s expanding portfolio of bilateral energy and climate collaboration with India. She also announced that DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd.) have agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to help India reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity generation, through advanced coal-fired power plant computational modeling, the development and testing of advanced sensors and diagnostics for power plant applications, and an information exchange on carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).
Deputy Secretary Sherwood-Randall met with Minister of Power Piyush Goyal immediately prior to the U.S.-India Strategic & Commercial Dialogue to discuss our bilateral work, as well as our multilateral initiatives on clean energy and efforts to combat climate change under Mission Innovation and the Clean Energy Ministerial. Both countries agreed to develop a plan of action to make bilateral clean energy collaboration more impactful. The meeting between Deputy Secretary Sherwood-Randall and Minister Goyal focused on progress under the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE). This includes the recent announcement of funding for a fourth research track on smart grid and energy storage to complement the three existing research tracks on solar energy, energy efficiency in buildings, and biofuels. In addition, both supported the launch of the PACE Fellows program to enable Indian researchers to work at U.S. National Laboratories. PACE Fellows will include mid-career renewable energy professionals and their participation will build capacity for innovation in India.
The meeting between the Deputy Secretary and Minister Goyal advanced efforts focused on India's interest in enhancing the capacity of its research institutions to pursue innovation in clean energy technologies which was identified as a strategic objective by Secretary Ernest Moniz and Minister Goyal in 2015 and by President Obama and Prime Minister Modi in June 2016.
