Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) Energy Consortium hosted an Industry Meet on June 30, 2022 to boost the National and International efforts towards a low-carbon future. The ‘Industry Day’ event focused on providing international perspectives and an outlook on the evolving global energy challenges and opportunities for India.
The Energy Consortium’s Strategic Action Teams, comprised of IIT Madras faculty and advisors from member industries, presented reports on various projects underway in areas of National Importance such as hydrogen economy, carbon capture and storage, ammonia value chain and energy economics for net-zero, among others. A discussion on policy imperatives and international collaboration from Government Representatives was also held.
The IIT Madras Energy Consortium was established in December 2021 to leverage the institute’s expertise to accelerate the de-carbonization of Indian industry’s energy systems. It aims to be a critical contributor to India’s Net Zero journey by providing valuable R&D assistance to Indian industries in low carbon energy transition pathways.
The Consortium is an umbrella effort to aggregate individual research efforts across IITM and multiple industry partners together to address grand challenge areas that are critical to energy security of the country and accelerate the technology and innovation efforts.
The event brought together the industry founding members of the Energy consortium alongside representatives from NITI Aayog and the Consulates of the U.S. and Australia to enable international collaboration on topics in energy research, technology, innovation and policy imperatives. The global leadership of major Corporate firms Shell, and Baker Hughes, shared their perspectives on the top energy priorities for their businesses in India and globally.
India’s energy challenges are problems without borders, requiring technology and engineering solutions. Technology solutions at scale in India are potentially global solutions and industry-academia partnerships give power and momentum to such technological developments.
The Key outcomes envisaged from the Industry Day Event include:
- Grand challenge areas for research at Energy Consortium are identified and shared with multiple stakeholders including academia, industry and government
- Methodologies for transparent and clear metrics such as achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and addressing sustainable development goals overall will be formulated
- Preparing future leaders with diverse perspectives, who would be capable of navigating the cultural rewiring that comes about from a sustainable energy-dominated future
IIT Madras' expertise includes carbon capture and storage, gas hydrates, coal and biomass conversion to useful chemicals, renewable energy systems including applications in desalination and cold storage, electrolyser technologies for CO2 conversion and green hydrogen, energy storage technologies beyond lithium, and distributed energy management including for AC and DC microgrids.
The IIT Madras Energy Consortium, which is part of the Office of Global Engagement, IIT Madras, brings all energy research together as one large effort. The consortium has active participation from more than 50 IIT Madras Faculty from multiple disciplines, with significant technical expertise and demonstrated contributions on the world stage. In addition, we have over 250 postgraduate students (PhD and MS) and about 25 plus post-doctoral fellows working in various domains related to energy.
Click Here for More Science & Technology