22 April 2015

The clean energy opportunity

April 22, 2015 

In the last six months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama have held historic meetings, brought India and the US closer together, and created a partnership to jointly seize the enormous economic and environmental opportunities,driving both countries towards a clean energy future. Addressing climate change will be challenging for each country in different ways, as we transition away from economies based on fossil fuels. But the clean energy future promises opportunities that dwarf these challenges: greater energy access, lower and less volatile energy costs over the long term, keeping energy dollars closer to home, spurring high-tech innovation, growing clean energy jobs and reducing greenhouse gasemissions and local air pollution. 

Eight years ago, with a focus on seizing these opportunities, the state government of Massachusetts (a small state in the US with a population 6.5 million) worked with the high-tech sector, universities, the investment community, municipalities and non-governmental organisations to re-write our energy reality. We harnessed markets. We brought regulations into the 21st century. We tried innovative policies. We encouraged new financing mechanisms. We opened the door for innovators to innovate and business people to grow businesses.Our goal was to take an outmoded energy system that was steeped in a 100-year history and unleash companies and entrepreneurs, cities and towns, and customers to deploy solar and wind power, buy electric vehicles, build smart grid infrastructure, developnew storage technologies and invest in a cleaner, more reliable, more stable system.The results have been astonishing, and on this Earth Day, it proves the notion thateconomic development and environmental protection can go hand in hand.

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