In his address, Sinha spoke about the initiatives that have been proposed and are being considered by the government, including as part of the plan for the G20. He noted that greater climate investments would greatly benefit the Global North, Global South, and the planet, saying that “net zero is net positive for the Global South.” He observed that solar energy could be a third crop for Indian farmers and, saying that the time for incrementalism regarding addressing climate change is gone, he urged the members of the PE-VC industry to engage with the idea of climate investing.
He discussed the vast opportunity presented by climate financing for the PE-VC industry: “We also, at the same time, need to do two important things from an enabling point of view – one, is we need to get global standards on what is green and what is not green and then we need to get these sectoral pathways lined up. At the same time, we need to make sure that there is enough capital flowing into these blended finance instruments so that we can really get these trillions of dollars of private sector capital flow. But we are not talking about substantially more budgetary resources. Budgetary resources from the Global North are limited and will remain limited. It’s all about mobilizing private sector capital, mobilizing effectively what you all do. So, this is going to be, I think, for the entire venture capital private equity industry the story of the next decade, which is green investing and unlocking the resources to pursue green investment. The kind of capital flows that we are going to see, I think, are really going to be much bigger than the ones that we’ve seen in the digitization, digital space.”
On climate investing being a significant way to attract global capital, Sinha said in a statement, “I am a believer in carbon trading and carbon markets, but to my mind, it’s not low-hanging fruit. I think we could put a hundred billion dollars into India and other industries where we have, enormous low-hanging fruit, but as in electric mobility, rooftop solar, solar in agricultural applications, whether it is energy conservation, we have so many opportunities where we could easily put a hundred billion dollars towards, with really high-quality commercial returns, even today.”
