Atanu Mukherjee, President & CEO of Dastur and Dastur Energy is speaker at MITsdm

The need for cheap and sustainable energy will continue to expand as industrial and economic growth accelerates. The challenge is to architect energy systems and feedstocks for a future industrial economy which is sustainable, economically viable, socially integrative and future-proof while leveraging the resource endowments of the nation. While renewables are a good carbon neutral energy complement, a growing industrial economy will need cost-effective and clean primary or base load energy. Similarly, as India is completely dependent on imported crude and crude based feedstocks for its industry and the economy, crude volatility and geo-political disruptions can severely destabilize the nation. The country has limited gas or oil reserves but has the 5th largest coal reserves in the world. By gasifying the vast reserves of Indian high ash coal and by cost effectively capturing the carbon using carbon capture technology, use and sequestration, India can enable an entire gasification value chain based on syn-gas and clean coal technology. The synthesis of such an energy and industrial feedstock system requires systemic architectural considerations on technology options, sustainability, economics, trade, finance, logistics and – importantly – government policy.