There is growing agreement that energy policy in India needs to be approached with the explicit aim of meeting multiple economic, social and environmental objectives.
There are two immediate policy contexts salient to this discussion. First, long-term energy planning in India would be greatly strengthened by explicitly accounting for the effect of multiple objectives. A recent CPR-IIASA study shows that macro-models inadequately inform India’s broader sustainable development objectives. Second, India is preparing to place on the table our ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribution’ (INDC) for the Paris COP, and is also preparing “Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions” (NAMAs). Both of these are informed by India’s long-standing ‘co-benefits’ approach that seeks to integrate climate and development policy. Both policy contexts would be strengthened by a more robust approach.
To stimulate conversation around these questions, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), in partnership with the Prayas (Energy Group) and the Energy Research Centre (ERC), South Africa, organized a technical workshop on multiple objectives based policy analysis.
The workshop suggested potential ways forward and focus on a framework to operationalize co-benefits. It provided a basis to discuss the demonstrated proof of concept, and the use of MCDA techniques to ask policy questions and identity trade-offs. The discussion was informed by two detailed cases studies, in the cooking and buildings sector (drawing on the Indian Energy Security Scenarios 2047), to illustrate MCDA’s potential and challenges. The workshop also built on earlier work which explored a co-benefits approach undertaken by CPR and Prayas in collaboration with the Delhi Science Forum.
Workshop Materials
The presentations made at the workshop, list of participants, and workshop proceedings report can be downloaded from the links below.
Workshop Report
Presentation: Methodologies for Multiple Objectives Based Energy Policies
Presentation: Multi-criteria decision analysis in climate policy
Presentation: Case Studies-Multi Criteria Decision Analysis of the Cooking and Buildings Sector
List of Participants
Additional Resources
A ‘Dashboard’ for the Indian Energy Sector
Informing India’s Energy and Climate Debate: Policy Lessons from Modelling Studies
The Indian Energy Security Scenarios 2047
Indian Climate Change Policy: Exploring a Co-Benefits Based Approach
Towards Methodologies for Multiple Objective-Based Energy and Climate Policy
