U.S.-India Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP):
Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri co-chaired a virtual Ministerial meeting with U.S. Secretary of Energy Ms. Jennifer Granholm to launch the revamped U.S.-India Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP).
- The SCEP is launched in accordance with U.S.-India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden at the Leaders Summit on Climate held in April this year.
- The SCEP organizes inter-governmental engagement across five pillars of cooperation: (1) Power and Energy Efficiency; (2); Responsible Oil and Gas; (3) Renewable Energy; (4) Sustainable Growth and (5) Emerging Fuels.
- A new India-US Task Force on Biofuels was also announced to build on the scope of work on cooperation in biofuels sector.
- The two sides also announced rechristening of Gas Task Force to India-US Low Emissions Gas Task Force, which would continue to forge collaboration between U.S. and Indian companies on innovative projects to support India’s vision of gas-based economy.
- Both sides have initiated institutionalization of India Energy Modeling Forum with the constitution of Six Task Forces for carrying out research and modeling in different areas.
- Building on the success of the first phase, the two sides agreed to expand the scope of the work to include smart grid and grid storage as part of the second phase of the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE)-R initiative anchored on the Indian side by the Department of Science & Technology.
