Black to Green: Carbon Debate and Beyond

Categorized Under: Climate

Published in HIMAL Southasian, June 2009. Ananth Chikkatur of ICF International and Sunita Dubey of GroundWork USA provide a broad overview of the energy challenges in South Asia in the context of a changing climate due to global warming. They explain that South Asia’s energy consumption will rise in the future, but that an energy-secure future involves not only getting access to energy resources, but also dealing with a whole spectrum of increasingly pressing environmental and ecological issues. Climate change impacts such as alterations in the Himalayan system and increasing severe weather events (floods, droughts, coastal inundation) could be severe and will adversely affect the large population in South Asia.

The article concludes by providing a range of policy options and recommendations, and notes that rather than the current piecemeal approach, an integrated energy and environment policy needs to be devised and implemented. By getting the energy policy ‘right,’ the authors expect that the policies in other spheres will also fall into place.

Authored By

Dr. Ananth Chikkatur
ManagerICF International

Ananth Chikkatur has experience in the energy and environmental sector and has worked on several power sector, natural gas, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, including projects for private clients, World Bank, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the European Commission. Dr. Chikkatur has worked on projects to understand natural gas demand in India and Mozambique, and he has managed several power sector modeling projects based on ICF’s proprietary energy models. He currently is working on smart grid-related work for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Dr. Chikkatur's research at Harvard Kennedy School focused on devising better policies for advancing cleaner coal-power technologies in India, and he worked with the Indian Planning Commission to assess policy issues in the Indian coal and coal-power sectors. He also worked on broader energy policies in India, including promoting energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). His interests include energy policy, technology innovation, cleaner power generation technologies, energy efficiency, small-scale/rural energy systems, and the politics of—and responses to—climate change.

Dr. Chikkatur has a Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachuetts Institute of Technology, and he joined Harvard Kennedy School’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) project as a post-doctoral research fellow.