US, India welcome growing energy cooperation in SCEP ministerial meeting

At the ministerial meeting of the US-India Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP) in Delhi, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri and US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted the growing importance of bilateral energy cooperation between US and India and underscored the importance of bilateral clean energy engagement.  

At the meeting, the ministers welcomed the establishment of the public-private Energy Storage Task Force and the efforts to support large-scale integration of renewable energy. The ministers also welcomed the launch of the US-India New and Emerging Renewable Energy Technologies Action Platform (RETAP) to accelerate the development of key technologies to advance common ambitious clean energy goals.

The Ministry of Petroleum and  Natural Gas said that the two sides also recognised the importance of producing green hydrogen as a critical energy source for “global decarbonisation and agreed to support each other’s national hydrogen missions”.

The sides reviewed the SCEP mandate over clean and renewable energy and increased collaboration in emerging technologies like battery storage and swapping technologies, gas hydrates, advanced biofuels, and hydrogen and electrolyzer production.

Both sides launched the South Asia Group for Energy (SAGE) to deepen the engagement between Indian agencies and US national laboratories to support building modelling capacity in the Life Cycle Assessment of low carbon technologies and analytics on energy consumption in the building sector.

The sides also acknowledged and praised the longstanding joint research and development under the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy-Research (PACE-R), including the US-India Collaborative for Smart Distribution System with Storage (UI-ASSIST) consortium co-led by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and Washington State University.