Climate change mitigation involves strategies aimed at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and implementing sustainable practices. CSTEP focuses on building models to simulate India's future across sectors, such as transport, industries, buildings, agriculture, and forestry, to find interventions required to achieve a sustainable and secure future. Our work also involves the study of certain themes that cut across sectors (quality of life and development vs climate action, water and land demands for agriculture vs power, etc).
Viewing India’s Net-Zero Ambition Through the Lens of Polysilicon
As India dons the role of a solar superpower, a crucial hurdle in the country’s journey to self-reliance in this sector is the availability of the key raw material—polysilicon. It is a semiconductor that helps convert photons to electricity, thereby forming the brick of solar cells. The production of polysilicon—an energy-intensive material—requires copious amounts of high-quality silicon. While silicon is abundantly found in India and the rest of the world, competition for the mineral is extremely high.
The Solar PV Market in India: Technical Progress and Opportunities
So far in this series, we discussed different aspects of India’s solar PV sector, including taxation, policies, and the journey towards sustainability. In this concluding piece, we focus on popular technologies, innovations, challenges, and opportunities.