From Labs to Laws: How Science Can Shape India’s Climate Future | ft. Dr. Jai Asundi

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to the season five of the India Energy Hour podcast. This podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India energy transition through an in depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements and science. Your hosts for this episode are Shreya Jai, Delhi based energy and climate journalist and Dr. Sandeep Pai, Washington based energy transition researcher and author. The show is produced by 101 reporters, a pan India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. If you like our podcast, please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or the platform where you listen to our podcast. Your support will help us reach a larger audience.

Solving the climate crisis—whether by scaling renewable energy or phasing down fossil fuels—requires rigorous, science-based policy that delivers win-win solutions for stakeholders. 

In this episode, Dr. Jai Asundi, Executive Director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), shares how to navigate India’s complex energy and climate policy landscape to ensure research doesn’t just sit on shelves, but actively shapes decisions for a sustainable future.

[Podcast interview]

Sandeep Pai: Hello Jai, welcome to The India Energy Hour, we have so many common friends and I think , it also friends with my former PHD advisors , so it’s really great to finally have you on the podcast, we have been thinking about having you for a while but something or the other came up but never got an opportunity, so thank you for joining.

Dr. Jai Asundi: Thank you, Sandeep. Thank you, Shreya. I think I have been listening to you guys for a while. And, you know, it’s not a surprise to be talking to you. I wish I had met you when you were doing your PhD, but good to be speaking to you now.

Sandeep Pai: Excellent. So, you know, we just want to get started by basically understanding your story. And I think from our listeners, we know that this is their favorite part of the podcast. I mean, they like the topics and the depth of all that, but they also like because this field is so interdisciplinary and people come from all kinds of backgrounds. And so it kind of inspires many aspiring energy climate people that, okay, you know, I’m a graduate of English literature, but I could still do very technical work. So love to start from, you know, maybe from your even childhood to where you are now and like how you dabbled in this space and where you are.

Dr. Jai Asundi: Yeah. So, Sandeep, you know, unfortunately for your listeners, I have the most boring background for the topic that we are going to talk about. You know, I obviously grew up in Bombay. My father was a scientist with the Baba Atomic Research Center. And so I was surrounded by lots of people doing science and technology and engineering all the time. And so that was the background growing up. And, you know, I can’t remember when I didn’t know about the Indian Institute of Technology. You know, that’s the kind of environment I was in. And so I was lucky enough to have the right set of friends, right set of motivations to actually make it to IIT Bombay. And I started with chemical engineering because that’s what my rank would give me. And I was agnostic. I didn’t really care about discipline. I just cared about doing something interesting in engineering. And the interesting part about chemical engineering was that it was fairly broad. There are lots of subjects that you take up. It’s a, I would like to theme it just like mechanical engineering, a fairly generic engineering discipline. You’re not, you know, dovetailed into one topic or the other. And I have friends doing all kinds of things after being a chemical engineer. So after training in chemical engineering, let’s start with that. And so I think my, you know, I did, I don’t think I was a very great student. I was probably middle of the class in engineering, of course. But, you know, I was completely okay with that because I knew the caliber of people who are ahead of me, much brighter, much more hardworking. But the interesting thing was I realized that I did have the ability to communicate. I did have the ability to, you know, talk to people. So one of the things that started me off was in my third year, at the end of third year, all of us had to do internship, right? So we all had to go to what is called the practical training where we had to go to industry, see what real problems in the engineering discipline are and work on that. And I quite luckily got an offer at a place where I was told that you are a chemical engineer. We’ve got an effluent treatment plant that does not seem to work. Do something about it. And, you know, you think at that moment that, wait a minute, you know, I have not even learned. I’ve not even dusted the surface of this discipline. And here I am being thrown into the deep end. But of course, you know, it was the perfect MO for me because I then took the time to start studying on my own, figuring out what I need to do to build an effluent treatment plant. And of course, there were people, helpful people, engineers there who gave me a sense of why they were not able to, why it was not working because they had changed the process. They changed a bunch of things. So they just wanted somebody to come and give a, you know, a rough calculation so that then they could do the real stuff after that. And so I spent time the entire summer working on that project. It actually ended up being quite an interesting project. And I thought, wow, this is, you know, kind of interesting in terms of what we should be doing. And sure enough, when I came back in my final year, I had to do a bachelor’s thesis. And I worked with a professor by the name SL Narayan Moorthy. And he said that, hey, there is a new professor who’s come down, come back from Syracuse. Why don’t you work with him on this particular project he has in mind? And that was on, you know, desalination, or actually it was on reverse osmosis for one of the fertilizer companies in Bombay looking at water. And that’s when I really got aware of the issues about water. So fast forward, you know, it was an interesting project, worked on it, figured out lots of things around cost, economics, you know, things that you normally don’t do as a engineer, but I had to get into that. And then, you know, that really got me thinking about this whole idea of engineering and public policy, because we were talking about water, we were talking about environment, we were talking about all of these things. But companies are only worried about their boundaries. They’re not worried about something broader. In the meantime, also, you know, one of the good things about being in a place like IIT Bombay is that you have a lot of students, a lot of people who are looking out into the world, into what new things are there. And there was somebody who came back to me and said, hey, I’m going to MIT. And I said, what are you going for? He says, I’m going for this program called Technology and Public Policy. And I was like, what? What the hell is that? And that’s when I started, you know, this was the early days, I would say not in the early days of the net, it was pre-net. So we had to write to people saying that, hey, do you know any about some programs that are of this type and things like that? And then I learned about, you know, MIT’s Technology Public Policy program. There was a program at Berkeley. There was a program at Stanford. And then, of course, it just so happened that I heard about this program in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon. And I managed to write to them and get their brochures and then read through it. And it really struck me that this is exactly what I wanted to do, even though, you know, at that time, I was giving, you know, CAT all those MBA exams. You know, I even got called for an interview. But by that time, I got admission. This was much later. I was working and I got admission to Carnegie Mellon and I also got a scholarship. So then I decided I would take up the PhD program in engineering and public policy. And that’s when I moved there to do my PhD. We are talking about 1997. Worked on my PhD there on very different issues. I worked on issues around information systems, which was a complete change. But what I did there was also scrupulously attend every seminar that was there in the department. I spent a lot of time trying to read as much as I can about everything and anything. If there was a topic in artificial intelligence, I would go attend it. If there was a topic in climate change integrated assessment models, I would go attend that. There would be people working on air quality. I would go attend that. So I did that with a vengeance, right? I didn’t treat the 9 to 5 as the time to go study. I would study after hours, like post 6 o’clock. But 9 to 5, I would be trying to attend as much as possible. So post that, of course, I got an offer to become faculty at the University of Texas. Spent about seven years there teaching at the business school. What I really enjoyed about that was it really taught me economics because I was in the business school and I had a whole bunch of economists as fellow faculty members. And, you know, I really dug my teeth into that. And then around 2007, 2008, you know, my PhD advisor, Dr. V.S. Arunachalam, he had come back to India and had startedCSTEP in 2005. And he, you know, called me and asked me that would you be interested in coming back and joiningCSTEP? And so I said, you know, let me try it out for a semester or a summer. So I came in 2008, in the summer of 2008, and did a sort of a pseudo sabbatical here and looked at the kind of subjects they were working on. And at that time, you know, the discussion with him was that I would work on, again, information technology and issues around that. And then in 2009, I decided to come back. I returned to Bangalore and I joinedCSTEP. And while the early years I thought, okay, I’ll take my time to start the information technology part, I must say that I really got pulled into all the other subjects that were just as interesting and just as important that made me actually really dig deep into that time at CMU where I used to spend listening to seminars. And I could see that now playing out in the real world. And so it was sort of a coming, a full circle almost, where I started out learning chemical engineering, learning information technology, and then coming back to engineering again. And so to me, that was a very fulfilling moment. Time just flew really fast. And within a few years, I realized that, you know, if time is flying so fast, I must be really enjoying it. And I’ve been atCSTEP since 2009 formally, even though I spent the summer in 2008. And that has sort of been my journey. I took over as executive director in 2020. And, yeah, so that’s also been a big change for me in the last five years to work on different kinds of issues and problems over the past five years.


Shreya Jai: If I may just ask a quick question. Apart from your PhD, has there been any other turning points in your career which, like, really pushed you a little away from engineering and more towards the work that you do atCSTEP? And also, what were some of the projects or moments that made you realize that you can marry the two, actually?

Dr. Jai Asundi: You know, I don’t, I never thought of them as separate for some reason. Because I used to always see all these engineers going and joining Procter Gamble, Hindustan Leavers. And, you know, those are the top companies from, at least from a chemical engineering standpoint. They used to go and join and they would become management trainees and then they would become managers. And then I would realize that they are, you know, doing some of the things that are there for corporate. And I remember a lot of the alumnus would come back to college and talk about their experience and say that why being an engineer or why they’re training in engineering mattered. The notion of evidence, the notion of process, the notion of models, the notion of mathematics, and, you know, basically using, you know, logic to solve problems. And I think that was the training that they got. And so they saw that. And so for me, when I saw the problems that I saw in my undergraduate, you know, on both the effluent treatment plant or was it also to do with, you know, the desalination plant, I realized that there are, you know, these are all connected. You cannot say that this is separate. And I also studied a little bit of a history of engineering and chemical engineering as a discipline actually started in the 1900s. And that’s when, you know, and so the entire 20th century has been about separating all these disciplines into separate buckets. But my view is that now engineering should actually be taught integrated because when you talk about problems of tomorrow, you need all kinds of disciplines coming together, right? If you’re going to work on robotics, you’ll need a mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, computer science engineer, chemical engineer, all working together to be able to solve a particular problem. And nobody can say, that’s not my problem. I will let someone else do it because you need to have some knowledge of each of these things. Now, you can specialize in certain things, but you will have to have a good understanding of what is going on. You need to understand what refrigeration is. I mean, an electrical engineer cannot say, you know, I don’t know refrigeration. That’s the mechanical engineer’s problem. So I have always felt that these are all common problems. And I think it’s got to do with probably the background that I grew up in, which was, you know, at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, all the uncles, as I would call them, would be talking about different things. There would be a chemical engineer. There would be a mechanical engineer. And they are trying to run a nuclear power plant. And so they are thinking about it from that perspective.

Shreya Jai: I know we should move on to the topic, but given that you have talked so much about engineering and you’ve studied it so deeply into the history of it, I’m not sure if the Indian academics and people planning the engineering degrees in the country will agree on merging all these degrees together. But what do you think about integrating knowledge about public policy and public impact in engineering colleges across the country? Because it seems like that is missing. So the real life impact that you’re talking about doesn’t seem to happen. What are your thoughts on that? I’m very keen to know.

Dr. Jai Asundi: So let me start with this. IIT Gandhinagar has a general engineering discipline. They have an engineering degree. And I think whoever I talk to all agree with what I have to say. It’s just that how, you know, there’s so much legacy. How is that change going to happen? So the newer institutes can probably do it. Older institutions will have a much harder time. That said, I think public policy, all the top institutes now have a public policy department. And I think it’s not difficult for them to do that. I speak to a lot of people in IIT Bombay. There’s also IIT Madras. There’s IIT Delhi. Of course, you know, the head of department is a friend of mine. So, you know, I think we can definitely I think there’s no question about public policy being integrated into that. But I’m just I’m not sure, you know, at what stage it should be brought in. Maybe you bring it up as a, you know, an elective course, which is what we did, you know, when we did certain subjects when we were in our undergraduate. Maybe it can be electives. People who are interested in that can get into that. Maybe there could be an intro 101, which is what economics and biology now in chemical engineering disciplines. So I’m sure there could be a very easy way to introduce public policy into all of the engineering disciplines. You know, I think it’s a no brainer. I think all professors we work with on many projects, they could do it in a heartbeat.

Sandeep Pai: Right. Great. So I just want to now move back to your CSTEP journey a little bit and just kind of for 101 of our listeners, like if you can explain CSTEP and what it works on. And then I have a follow up question about which is, as I understand it, which is likeCSTEP is trying to integrate science policy technology, which is always a very big challenge in a country like India where, you know, decisions are not always science based or, you know, based on the best case, there’s a lot of political economy factors. So let’s start withCSTEP and then maybe dive into your main challenge of meeting this mission in a country like India.

Dr. Jai Asundi: Yeah. So CSTEP is really, I mean, in the full form is the center for study of science, technology and policy. And its mission is to enrich policymaking through innovative approaches using science and technology for a sustainable, secure, inclusive society. Right. So that’s the broad mandate. The key piece that CSTEP was started, at least in the initial days in the early 2000s, when Dr. Natchelam started, it was that we were facing a severe energy crisis. Right. So the question was, how are we going to meet our energy needs, given that we want to develop as a country? And, you know, you studied this, Sandeep, that, you know, that your human development index is a very strong function of the amount of energy that’s provided or supplied to people. And so the question was, how do we get that kind of energy? Now, obviously, you know, some of these questions have started to morph and change over this 20-year period that we’ve been around. But I think the important thing is that there are, I would say, grand challenges that we have to solve in the coming decades, if not the next few years. And that’s the key pieces of what CSTEP is doing. Right. So the first grand challenge. So the broad grand challenge is a sustainable, secure future. Right. So that’s I think everyone will agree. Yes, we need a sustainable, secure future. But under that, what are the grand challenges? So the first grand challenge is what I would call the clean energy transition. And I think that’s something that we’ll talk about today a lot more. But I will say that clean energy transition is a very important challenge. The second one is fairly important is the clean air for all challenge. Right. How do we make sure that we get clean air for all? And the third challenge is really related to what I think also think tanks should also do is this notion of long term transitions or long term strategies for a decent quality of life. Right. So I can achieve the first two and say, OK, I’m going to do it up to 2050. But after 2050, I don’t know. That’s not the way we can operate. Right. We have to operate with the idea that beyond 2050. And, you know, we are already talking about net zero 2070. What is that decent quality of life that we are going to afford all our people, all the people living not just in India, but across the world? And what is it that we need to be doing in order to achieve that? So those are what we would call long term strategies. So. Under that, you will have the issue of climate mitigation, climate adaptation, you know, circular economy, sustainability, the broad aspects related to that. So, you know, this is how we have thought about it. And internally, we also have a challenge which we put to ourselves is what we call digital transformation. That is, how are we using the best digital tools, models, techniques to be able to achieve or to stand up to these three challenges that I talked about? So that’s the way we are thinking about our work. As you see, it’s it is, you know, very related to sustainability, energy, but it does not preclude looking at some other things. Right. If you have to look at long term strategies, we might need to start thinking about new areas. So we keep ourselves open to that. And so which is why in the name also, there is nothing that says energy. There’s nothing that says, you know, climate. There’s nothing that says AI. You know, none of those things are said, but it is there in our mission switching policymaking using innovative approaches, using science and technology. So that’s the way we have thought aboutCSTEP. And, you know, it also comes from a history. Right. Dr. Anachalam used to be scientific advisor to Raksha Mantri. And in many of the cases, it used to be the prime minister of that time. And he went through almost, you know, seven prime ministers or seven seven ministers. And he got the sense that the political class asked questions that need to be answered. Right. It is the duty of the science and technology establishment to answer certain questions. And the answer to questions is not always do this or do that. It is if you do X, this is what will happen. If you do Y, this is what will happen. If you do Z, this is what will happen. So this is a notion of saying that what are my options and then leave it to the elected bodies or policymakers to decide what course of action they should take.

Sandeep Pai: Yeah, that’s a great answer. I just want to follow up on my kind of just take it one step deeper, which is I completely understand that, you know, like you create science based evidence. You communicate it to the relevant stakeholders. They ask good questions. I have no doubt about their intent to ask good questions. But how receptive they are or not. And I’m asking in general terms without naming anybody, like how receptive they are in terms of, you know, you’re for example, if you take an air pollution problem, you’re pointing to clear science based solutions that are embedded in global best practices, etc. But how easy it is for them to take and accept this and run with it. What has been your experience with that?

Dr. Jai Asundi: So, you know, so let me take you to a little bit of history. Right. So when we first started out, there were a few think tanks. Right. 2005, you had the Terry, the Energy Research Institute. And was I don’t know whether it was called Tata. It was around that time when that transition happened. But again, it was in the name was energy. Right. So they were only looking at energy. Now. The problem is that not too many people also knew about Terry. Right. So apart from a certain set of civil servants, if you went at the state level, very few people knew. And so the biggest task that we had when we started out was, who are you? Right. What what kind of animal are you? You know, you’re not IBM. You’re not this. You’re not Infosys. You’re not this. You’re not that. But you’re not also one of those, you know, activist NGOs. Right. So the question then becomes, OK, so who are you? And so we had to explain to them what where we are coming from and the fact that we are very focused on science and technology. We are very focused on evidence and then also providing the options. And I think that was the first part of what we had to do. And once people understood where we came from, what we were trying to do, they were actually far more receptive. And in fact, they wanted more and more from us, more than we could actually provide or offer at that point in time. So I will say once people know that where you’re coming from, and I think that’s a big challenge many entities have. I mean, you will be amazed at the number of people that approach policymakers for various things that are going on. And they have to discern whether this person is coming with an agenda or not. Right. Is this person coming with my or the public interest at heart or is their own interest? And I don’t envy that position because, you know, you have a few minutes to discern that. And of course, they will take their time to do that. And I think so this is where we realized one of the biggest things for us to learn was the idea of building trust. Building trust in our ability to deliver on independent and rigorous creditworthy research and work that they can then take to the next step. So that is an important part of that journey where building credibility is a biggest part of it. And I keep telling my colleagues this is that, you know, trust is earned in drops, but lost in buckets. Right. So you have to, you know, you may be you have to be very careful when you make any claim statement and you have to do it. And it is a very interesting way to to operate. So you have to build that up over a period of time. And everybody has their own journey because policymakers also change. Right. Today, I was working with a secretary. Tomorrow, it will be another secretary. And so I have to make sure that I go back to that person. It’s almost sometimes a clean slate. Yes, there will be some history. The person will know what you have done. All those things are good. But at the same time, every person will come in with their own, you know, I would say perspectives and thoughts about something. And sometimes it is two steps forward, one step back or one step forward, two steps back. It varies from place to place. I will say that by and large, our experience has been very positive. And also, maybe it’s because of the credit worthiness of the founder, Dr. Nachnam and the, you know, the first executive director, Anshu Bharadwaj, who had a lot of, you know, credit with the system. So people would listen to what we had to say and what we would do. And then they would see the rigor of our work and then use that as a means to get to the next step. So I think that’s a very big part of it. So I would say, you know, it’s a journey that you have to take. And people will, in the beginning, wonder where you’re coming from and why you’re saying what you’re saying. But over time, they will understand that your perspective is fairly unique.
Shreya Jai: During this whole course of your journey here at CSTEP, and it’s good to know the idea that it was founded on and the initial discussion, initial engagement that you had with the policymakers. Over the years, how easy, difficult or tricky has it become to, you know, do a science-based recommendations to the government, to the policymakers? Has there been any sea change in how receptive the policymakers are?

Dr. Jai Asundi: I don’t know. I cannot compare so much because I did not have that level of trust, say, 15 years ago with these people. So when I would go to them, they would see us as, you know, some new people coming on the block. And today I speak from actually a position of more, you know, history behind me. I can show a whole bunch of reports. I can show a whole bunch of impacts that we’ve made. And so it’s a very difficult question to ask. I will say that, you know, the cadre, both the bureaucracy by and large is far more informed today than maybe 20 years ago. And I would say they are very well read. They know a lot more going on. There are a lot more think tanks in the Indian space that do the kind of work that we do. And so they are able to discern some of these things fairly well. So I have a feeling that maybe more so now than before. But I cannot, you know, it’s a bias of time, right, that I have or the advantage of time that I have is I’ve built credibility. So then they’re probably listening to me more now than before. But I don’t think it may have been any different. I think one thing that I have I have found throughout that’s constant over this period of time is whenever you went with new ideas or solutions, people were always willing to listen and push you and try to see where that could take them. Because everybody is looking for solutions. And, you know, you are aware that the space is complex. It’s not simple, right? It’s not solving an equation and producing an answer. It’s not that. There are a lot of perspectives to be taken. It’s a multi-criteria decision making going on. And I think that’s an important aspect of what we need to keep in mind when we are looking at these problems is that there are a lot of perspectives. And I tell my colleagues this also all the time is that don’t think that just because you came up with a solution that is the right solution because there may be a perspective that we have not been able to capture. Right. And so we have to keep that in mind and be humble in that approach, saying that here are some choices, here are some possibilities, and maybe we can take it from there.

Sandeep Pai: Right. My next question is really kind of starting to focus about your first grand challenge, your and CSTEPs, which is the clean energy transition. So how is CSTEP and you, as the leader of CSTEP, thinking about clean energy deployment or clean energy transition at scale? What are some of the key priorities that a country like India should really focus on? And how do we reduce emissions? That’s a linked question to that.

Dr. Jai Asundi: So, you know, short answers, we’ve been working on solar long before anyone considered solar as a solution. Right. So back in 2009, I remember we were working on some solar solutions and looking at how diesel abatement could be one of the strategies. Right. So that was the time when we were saying that instead of burning diesel, can we use solar? Because that was a cost point. Now, of course, there’s no question about it. So I will start from, you know, meta and then come back to meta. Right. So the meta question first is to ask, what are we going to be using the energy for? Right. And I think that’s a very important question to be asked, especially in the sector, given that we know that energy is not cheap in India. Even though we say solar is cheap, it’s still not cheap in India. Right. And the perspective that we’ve done and some of our work in the climate mitigation work is to look at how much energy would we really need and what is a decent quality of life. Right. So if we apply to all benchmarks in the past were always about, oh, you know, the OECD countries have this per capita energy consumption. So we need to get to that or the U.S. has so much. So we need to get to that or Canada has so much. I mean, these are countries that are way above the average. Right. Even if you get to world average, which is much lower than OECD countries, even that is fairly high for a country like India. So the question becomes, what is that energy for? Right. And so that’s where our work on what we call the decent quality of life came out, where we said, OK, what are the main criteria for why we need it? We need it for food. We need it for shelter. We need it for education. We need it for all these needs. And then we start thinking about what would be considered decent. Because if you apply the model of the American, which is a white picket fence house with two car garage, I don’t think there’s enough earth to deal with that. Right. So we are not going to be able to do that. And I think we need to think about a more Indian notion of what a decent quality of life should be. Right. A house with 50 or, you know, 50 square meters per household should be considered a reasonable household. I mean, not everyone needs to be living in, you know, a thousand or two thousand square meter household. Right. I think it’s fairly smaller. We can we can manage. Of course, there will be it’s a distribution. There will be that. But I think everyone at a minimum should be at that point in time. So I think that’s where the real start is. And then we step in and look at the specifics of clean energy. There is the idea of using solar energy. So some of our early work was saying, how do we site solar plants? Right. Where should solar plants in India be based on a number of criteria? One is, of course, availability of solar resource. That is, is there sunlight in those places? Number two, is there’s land available? That’s the second one. The third one is, are there is there a transmission infrastructure nearby? You don’t want it to be in the middle of nowhere. And then now you have to build transmission capacity in those places. Fourth is is is this idea of can we now figure out how that demand will be met and then handle the variability associated with that? So there are all these things. And out of that came a tool which we used to call RE Atlas. And now it has become a tool called SiteWrite, which is used by a number of entities on looking at not just making sure that you find the right parcels of land, but also make sure you avoid places that are sensitive to ecological and social concerns. Right. So these are all these variables that keep getting added as we look at this question. So so one is, of course, the large scale solar. Then we also look at issues related to rooftop solar, which is another program at the other end of the spectrum, which is you say you have large scale and then you have distributed. So we’ve also been working on that aspect. We’ve been working with the MNRE quite a lot on that. And in the middle, there’s also a big piece. Right. There is one piece on how do we get this comms to become efficient in the way they operate. So that’s one thing. And the second one is on issues of transmission planning. How do we plan our transmission infrastructure given the needs of the future? So there are all of these pieces form what is called our energy power and, you know, renewables, energy and conservation groups. There’s another group working on, you know, electric mobility where we’ve been focusing mostly on freight because we feel that’s an area that really needs electrification and help towards moving away from diesel and also related to that. So you see. And then, of course, wind was also part of this. Of course, today everyone talks about solar. But wind has also been the RE Atlas was about wind and solar. It was not just about solar alone. And so you see we have now built, you know, a whole host of topics that we are now addressing all simultaneously. There’s transmission. There’s storage. There’s a discom. There’s large solar plants. And then there is rooftop PV. And then there is electric mobility, which also deals with that. So that all of these together form, you know, and then, of course, there is a little bit of work also on decarbonizing the industrial sector, the SMEs especially. We had in the past, we had worked on energy efficiency, looked at iron and steel, cement. And, you know, those entities are able to there’s their programs for that. It will go on and become efficient over periods of time. But I think the MSMEs are what require our attention. And so this in I think in total forms our energy and, you know, the clean energy transition piece. And it is relatively immediate. We are looking at what’s going to happen next year, what’s going to happen in two years, what’s going to happen in three years, what’s going to happen in five years. So it’s typically that time frame we are looking at. Of course, transmission infrastructure also takes about five to ten years for things to play out. And we’ve been working with various states on their strategic plans on energy and power over the coming decade, what they’ll need to do, how will demand shape up, what will happen, things like that going forward.

Shreya Jai: Very interesting, very exhaustive. And your work kind of mirrors of what Indian policymakers are also trying to do in the renewable energy segment. Over the years, at least over the last 10, 15 years, the policy has matured and kind of covers the whole supply chain. There’s a lot of push that is being given to manufacturing. You mentioned the states. I think renewable energy is a new tool of competitive federalism that we are witnessing. However, the problems that were there 10 to 15 years back continue to remain. One is obviously DISCOMS that you mentioned, which is again linked to adoption of renewable energy at a level where it is absorbed. Like we want more industries and commercial users to pick up RE. We want more RE to be sold to the states. Those problems remain. So you mentioned that you have a plan of one year and then there is transmission grid for three to five years. So in the short term, are you looking at some of these problems and probably have some case studies where you have worked and come up with some successful model of more and more RE absorption?

Dr. Jai Asundi: So, you know, so when you get into some of these institutions, you get into issues of governance and, you know, other things, which is not related to energy per se. But there are aspects related to efficiency of the DISCOMS. Sometimes it’s also to do with issues around collection efficiency and issues there. And in fact, our team has actually developed some tools that will help DISCOMS become better in the way they collect and manage their, you know, customer base as well as their collections. And, you know, the unintended consequences of this whole rooftop PV program is that we are being able to digitize a lot of the connections and the locations of customers and things like that for the DISCOMS. And they’re going to be able to get a lot more information that they can then act upon and become more efficient into the future. So, you know, we typically work with them on some of these issues, but we are not experts in governance. So we tend to stay on the technical side of things and sometimes help them with certain questions. So it’s, you know, these are problems that would be there even if it was coal or any other or gas or anything else. So it’s nothing to do with RE per se. Though RE brings interesting challenges, especially with the rooftop work that’s going on, it is bringing up interesting challenges related to that.

Shreya Jai: A good that you mentioned about technology, because this is an emerging narrative that I’m hearing across among the energy sector, especially with the government pushing something called the India Energy Stack, which basically will look at digitizing the whole energy grid, getting more data that you mentioned that rooftop is one way that you get more customer data with help in mainstreaming RE. So maybe the problem in RE is not about governance and policy anymore. It’s the same tender everywhere. Maybe technology would be a game changer for a country like India, which is yet to build a domestic supply chain, where there are different policy, different state, different type of customers. Very keen to know what you think of that.

Dr. Jai Asundi: You know, as a technology person, you would expect the obvious answer, but I would actually say that I’ll be the first one to say that technology is always not the solution. It is actually a tool to get there. I think we have to have clarity as to what you’re going to get to, where you want to go, and how technology can enable that path. You know, every technology is like a knife. It can cut both ways. You have to be very careful how you apply it. Yes, there is an opportunity here. It is actually a way in which you can pinpoint and get a lot of information at a fairly granular level and be able to manage things a lot better. And I think with the advent of the kinds of information technology tools available, and I’m assuming when you say technology, you mean information technology. I usually don’t like to say technology because even refrigeration is a technology. So information technology can play a major role. And I think that is something that we can definitely leverage. I think there’s a lot of work around the digital energy infrastructure and the digital public goods around that. And it’s just that I think one thing we will have to be very careful with, and which is, you know, the safety and security of people. I think people would be very wary of other people knowing how much energy they consume and things like that.

Sandeep Pai: Right. Very interesting. So I want to just kind of move in like a little bit different direction, which is like, so suppose you do a big study looking at DISCOMs and, you know, their services, etc. Now, you come up with recommendations. Those are technically feasible, techno-economically feasible. But how do you plan to or how do you, if you do already, integrate the political economy or the socio-economic side? Sometimes it integrates well, but the real reality would be very different. Like, you know, it makes sense to shut down very, very inefficient coal plants, but is it easy to shut down those plants or to even repurpose and things like that? That’s just an example. So how do you think about it? Moreover, and what is the approach?

Dr. Jai Asundi: So, you know, we have never shied away from the idea that they could be considerations that we have not taken into account. Right. So when we are preparing the reports itself, one of the things that we try to do is try to assess what are the other factors that will play a role in the final decision. Right. And the point of our work, even though it may be limited to a few parameters, we try to make sure that they can easily be looked at from the perspective of those other parameters. Right. So it’s it’s and I would say that we have not been rigorous enough if we have not considered those parameters. So for me, rigor is our ability to take into account those parameters. So, in fact, I would like to say that if there are important considerations beyond the two things that we are looking at, then that report is useless. I would say I wouldn’t want to do that report because that important criteria should also be included in that mix when we do the study, which is why one of the things that when we do studies is we like to work with the stakeholders. So we don’t like the academic model of I will go away in my cave or my ivory tower and work on something and then come to you and saying, OK, here is what I have for you. And you have to bend down and drink it like it’s Amrit and say, yes, I have been saved. No, that’s not the way this works. This works in a very different way. You have to work with the stakeholders, make sure that they understand the perspectives. They also get the technical side and then they are able to bring to bear the economic side. Right. Think about the work that we were talking about, the decent quality of life. Who is defining this? Right. And for us, it was we can’t define it. So we went to the various stakeholders and said, OK, what is a reasonable number for various things? How many beds per thousand people, how much education, how many seats, what’s the kind of infrastructure that would be needed for a decent quality of life? Because it’s not people sitting in cities or sitting in their ivory towers telling people what they should be living on, but it should come from the ground. And that’s the bottom up approach so that then it’s transparent. People look at it and say, yes, they’ve taken into this account. They’ve not taken into this into account. And it should be a conversation. Again, the report is never an end point, which is the other part that I get to at least at CSTEP is that we believe in building a lot of tools because with the tools, we will be able to. Change aspects of the parameters that we may not have taken into account. Can we take into account some of the new aspects someone has brought in and then give them that solution? So which is why we’ve spent a lot of time and effort and money also on the information technology tools. We’ve been doing that since 2008, where we’ve always built tools for various things related to what we are doing. And, you know, now even in air quality, that’s something that we are trying to put out there so that the average policymaker can use sophisticated tools, sorry, sophisticated techniques in a simple tool. Right. So that’s the challenge for us is that they have the power to say, you know what? I don’t like this. I like that. I like this. I like that. And, you know, in the early days at CSTEP, one of the things that we were trying to build was something called the decision theater. And we used to call it DARPAN or decision analysis for research and planning. And if you came to our office, you would see these multiple screens. And the idea behind that was that the first two screens are the problem statement. Right. People will come saying, I have this problem, I have that problem, problem statement. The remaining three or four screens would be the various outcomes or the outputs from those problems that you put in place and say, OK, what will be the impact on technology? What will we take impact on economics? What will be the impact on social? How do we look at this in total so that people are able to say, yes, this is a better solution? Because the problem that we have been facing is that everyone thinks, oh, I want to be optimal. But optimality may be a bad place to be. You may want to be in a place that’s robust and not optimal. And I think that language, I must credit the Rand Corporation to bring it to our attention is that, you know, sometimes optimality may be the edge of a hill. One little push and you’re off the hill. While robustness means that even if you’re pushed a little bit here and there, you’re still in a fairly good place. And I think that’s what public policy should be about. It should be about robustness because you do not know what is going to affect you in some of those places.

Sandeep Pai: Fantastic. I have one kind of more big picture question, which is, you know, often in energy space or climate space, one of the big challenges is to work on topics of long term importance. And one is to react to or sort of like respond to the immediate needs, for example, or change in policy and what that means. And or if a government is undertaking a major shift in something, so you want to feed into it, but then work on these large tools and stuff that that can feed into long term planning. How do you balance that both for yourself, but also, you know, it’s a big, it’s such a moving target, but at the same time, you should not lose sight of the big picture. So how do you balance that?

Dr. Jai Asundi: It’s indeed a very good question. And, you know, I think it is a bit, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to say ad hoc, but it is sometimes driven by the demands of the ecosystem, right? The point I think is that I don’t think there is a formula that says, oh, 20%, this 80%, that. There will be points in time where we may spend a lot of time on projects, which is what we have done in the past. And that has helped us build credibility. And then through that, we’ve been able to earn the necessary credits to be able to say that, okay, now let’s work on something long term. And so I think it’s a dynamic, I wouldn’t even call it an optimization of the dynamic system that we have to, you know, but I think the important thing is never forgetting that we need to work on the long term problem. Yeah. So I think the, the, the challenge that we always face is in the projects are always, you know, the immediate needs are seen very much, but then as we explain to certain people, why certain long-term issues are important, I think many funders, donors get that and they support us on some of those issues. So we have to balance it through our own means, always have a bare minimum of this long-term thinking. And I think we have been fairly successful at that. Now in the recent past, we do not do, we rarely do projects that are shorter than six months to a year. That’s, that’s one of the, because we are very clear about the rigor that we want to apply. And so the review cycles for the work that we do are long. And so we need to make sure that we spend adequate time on that. So a three-month project cannot have, you know, adequate time to do some of those things. And it, and that’s not research anymore, right? You’re not discovering anything new in three months. You’re just putting together something which any consulting company could do. And we would rather them do it than us do it.

Shreya Jai: I’ll just go back on the tech part as well. You establish AI for social impact as a sector of work at CSTEP. So first, can you explain how are you, you know, merging, amalgamating tech with research? And, you know, what are the learnings so far in it?

Dr. Jai Asundi: So I think the first step is the idea of tech and research, right? So I think, or information technology and research. I think any person who’s done a master’s or a degree from a good or reputed institute will know that you have to be able to play around with data. You have to be able to do certain kinds of analysis. You have to be able to do, you know, various types of modeling of some sort to come up with what-if scenarios and things like that and put that out there. So how do you do that? I mean, yes, you could do it by hand and a calculator, which we did when we were in our engineering days. But today you have computers that help you do some of these things in a fairly quick way. Even an Excel sheet, which a lot of people use, is sometimes good enough for what you want to do. So let’s start with that. So that’s something that we always started with. And so in each of the areas, look at clean energy, clean air, climate. All of them, you will have models, tools, processes, data that you have to crunch, and you will get answers to that, right? So that is that. Now, let’s fast forward, you know, a few years. And, you know, we were in the AI winter, if they may call it, you know, the entire 2000s to 2015, 16, 17. At that time, you know, we were still looking at how AI could be used for analyzing certain amount of data. Like, suppose if you wanted to do visual recognition of where, let’s say, brickkins are, can we do that from satellite data? Can we recognize certain things about where power plants are in the country using satellite data? Can we use, instead of a manually person going there and marking all these things down, can we use a program to do that? And that’s an early stage, what do you call machine learning model that can be used for that. Of course, post, what is it, 2020, 2021, 22, when the general GPT, you know, transformer logic came in. And that has now obviously changed it for everyone. Everyone seems to know about AI today because of GPT. But what we were doing in the past was also AI in some ways, right? You know, the visual models. We were doing a lot of sensor work that, you know, when you get data from sensors, can you figure out better algorithms to calibrate those sensors? Can you come up with that? So those are, again, various machine learning tools and techniques that were being used. For some time, we did some work on using AI and machine learning for maternal mortality and health and, you know, children, women, child health related stuff. We are not doing that anymore. But that was some of the areas. Again, we thought here is an idea of how AI could be used for development. Development. So when we say AI for good, it’s really AI for development, right? In the development sectors, how can AI be used? Today, of course, you have a lot more entities that are looking to work in those areas, right? And so the question that we are grappling with as a think tank is what is our role? What is it that we should be doing? In the beginning, it’s really about enabling those conversations, right? So we are fairly tech savvy as a think tank. If a policymaker comes to us and says, can you help assess this? We would be able to bring in the necessity expertise to be able to do that. But in the beginning, we were really looking at where all AI could be used, right? Which sectors, in what way, what could be doing that? Today, you know, everything is on steroids, right? So it’s amped up. Everybody’s talking about AI and everything. And so now we are the reverse, right? We are saying, okay, where would we need to worry about different challenges? What are the breaks associated with that? So, you know, our role has sort of gone from a cheerleader to, you know, I don’t know who to, what’s the opposite of that? But, you know, we are like, you know, let’s wait and watch. Let’s look at what are the governance models? What are the issues around that? How should we worry about some of the things? And I think the big things that we are worried about is localization. How do we make sure that the AI is local? It is for India, for Indians. And the data that is taken from Indians is used for Indians, as opposed to, you know, data from elsewhere used for Indians, which is not a good thing, or data from Indians being used elsewhere. Again, so I think we are still grappling with that. I don’t think it’s an easy answer. The point is that we are constantly exploring how AI can be used in, let’s say, clean energy. So we are using in some of our rooftop programs, we are trying to see whether we can, you know, identify whether a person has installed a panel, right? So the person has applied for subsidy, got the subsidy. Now, how do you know that the person has actually got the, you know, installed the panel on their roof? What kind of program are you going to do that? It’s a very big program. The prime minister’s program is, you know, he says, one crore households, right? I would say it’ll probably go to 10 crore households, given the, you know, the possibility of renewable energy, because people will say, hey, I want energy independence. I would like this. And how do we then monitor the installation of these things? You need AI, you need new methods to do that. You cannot create another bureaucracy for that. So there are various, I mean, same goes with, you know, transmission infrastructure planning, you know, air quality modeling, anything to do with that, we’ll have to think about how AI can be used. And then, of course, you know, the easy examples that people are always talking about is AI for agriculture, AI for health, AI. There are lots of examples there. But I think we are now stepping into the boots of, or the shoes of saying, what do we need to be worried about? How should we govern this? How should we think about this? And what are the aspects of it that we should be really careful about? You know, as you know, lots of interesting stories have been coming out about people engaging with GPT and causing themselves harm or causing other people harm. So how do we think about all of these things? Who will be liable? How do we think about all? I mean, it’s not an easy question to answer today. And I think a lot of thinking has to be put into that.

Shreya Jai: Thanks for that. And before we wrap up, just very quickly, would AI governance be an area of interest where UNC would want to step in and look at that segment? Because as you mentioned, you cannot attach more bureaucracy to it, first of all. But secondly, the way things are going, the kind of examples that we are seeing in terms of AI and its usage or misusage. Do you think that that is a segment that CSTEP would enter?


Dr. Jai Asundi: See, nothing in our mission statement says that we cannot do it. So as of now, I will say that we are exploring. You know, we’ve been early in this space. And, you know, it is hard, right? It is like the early days of the internet. No one knows where it is going to go, what’s going to happen. There are different people writing different things. We are listening to different things. And if you are to believe Sam Altman, you’ll think about one thing. If you listen to Jan LeCun, you’ll think something else. And so I think we will, we, as a think tank, one of the things that we are definitely going to be doing is keeping our eyes and ears open on any issues related to technology. So there’s one thing that we do at CSTEP is what we call technology assessment. And, you know, people can go to our website and look up the report that we have put out on how do you assess a technology that is still not there, right? It’s not mature. It’s not there. How do you assess a technology? What are the aspects or parameters you should think about? And so we’ve come up with a framework. I would encourage your listeners to go ahead and look at that because it’s agnostic to, it’s not just energy, it’s across the board that can we use this technology assessment framework to look at any new technology coming in, try to assess it because it’s not just about the technology. It’s not just about the economics. It’s also about issues related to security, you know, national prerogatives, social issues, training issues. Is it if the technology is very hard to train someone in? So these are all various aspects. And then also there’s issue of supply chain. Where is the supply going to come from to be able to run that technology? So there’s this framework I would encourage people to read. So this is the kind of work that we sort of enjoy doing as a think tank. It’s not a big part of our work, but it is part that we need to keep so that we think and we are thinking about the future, thinking about what are the issues that we need to address into the future so that we continue to innovate. There are many pieces of work that we did 10 years ago we don’t do anymore because we think there are enough public, private companies or public entities that are already doing that. So it’s not the role of the think tank to do that. We move on and keep thinking about what next.

Shreya Jai: Great. Thank you so much. And we would definitely be looking at this space and try to know what’s next and looking forward to what CSTEP does. Thank you so much for joining us here in this discussion. It was very different to the discussions that we usually have at the India Energy Hou , but it was very heartening to speak to someone who’s so passionate about both technology, information technology and public policy and how to use both for better development of the economy. So thank you again for joining us here.

Dr. Jai Asundi: Thank you, Shreya. Thank you, Sandeep. If I can just, you know, last statement before I leave is that, you know, this area is fairly broad and any person who’s interested in issues around technology policy, they do not need to be engineers, right? So I’ll say that myself. They do not need to be engineers. They need to be, one is curious because they need to be able to read a lot of things. And number two is be able to start thinking about issues that they may not have thought before. So be open to new ideas coming in from various people. So in fact, I would plug for the Energy Hour folks at least is plug two reports that our team has put out recently. One was called, I mean, both of them are called No Silver Bullet. It’s No Silver Bullet 1 and No Silver Bullet 2. And I would encourage people to read that because what it tells us is that it’s not, we’re not crystal ball gazing, right? We are looking at what are the opportunities or options available to us and what the implications of each of these options are. And pay attention to what those implications mean. Because you may then realize that something that you’ve been always thinking is great may not be actually so great. And the thing that you’ve been thinking was not so great may actually be a good way to transition into something else. So I would urge everyone to read these reports because they give a broader overview as to why you’re doing what you’re doing and what are the ways forward.

Sandeep Pai: Amazing. I will definitely be downloading and reading. So, and I definitely encourage everybody who’s listening to read them. Thank you so much from my side as well. And I think, you know, thank you. And it’s so great to connect generally beyond just speaking. And I wish we had more time so we could just go on and on and perhaps over a cup of coffee later. But thank you again. And, you know, I hope we can stay connected.

Dr. Jai Asundi: Yeah. Thanks again. And I think this was a wonderful hour spent and well spent, I must say.

Shreya Jai: Great. Thank you so much.

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