Day: 07th February, 2024 | Wednesday
Time: 3:45 pm to 4:45 pm IST

Session Description

Developing low carbon and renewable energy sources requires significant capital expenditure and government support. Addressing the energy trilemma also requires suitable long-term investments. Clean energy transitions often involve economic tradeoffs. While the need for clean energy has been recognized, three major challenges constitute the energy trilemma – energy security, environmental sustainability, and energy equity. The G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration highlighted the mismatch in the estimate of investment necessities and mentioned the requirement for “USD 4 trillion per year for clean energy technologies by 2030” to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The key technologies core to clean energy transitions are wind, solar, electric vehicles (EVs), and battery storage. Both wind and solar have critical mineral requirements. Solar has high requirements for copper and aluminum while wind energy has high requirements for rare earth elements, copper, and zinc. EVs and battery storage have high demands for copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements, and aluminium. Even hydrogen energy has a high requirement for nickel and platinum group metals. As the race for clean energy intensifies, critical minerals supply chains will be part of a global strategy to ensure net zero emissions. The distribution of mineral availability is extremely uneven and is concentrated in a few countries. Given the geopolitical context, meeting the twin goals of energy security and resource security is key to solving the energy trilemma. This session seeks to address the challenges posed by the energy trilemma and deliberate on the possible role global leaders can play in fast tracking the process in a resource-constrained world.

The umbrella question for this session is: What are the means to address challenges posed by the energy trilemma in a resource-constrained world

Flow

The duration of the session is 60 minutes. The addresses should be in the form of verbal interventions only. The format of the session does not allow the use of PowerPoint presentations. The chair/moderator must ensure that panellists adhere to the allotted time, for which there will be a timer/buzzer.