India Joins Big Tech Companies to Support Expansion of Green Technologies

The World Economic Forum and leaders of some of the world's largest businesses are announcing the expansion of a partnership aimed at propelling green technologies.

The First Movers Coalition includes businesses that make major purchases around green technologies and down their supply chains. The idea is to send market signals that lead to more investing and scaling up of technologies like green steel, green hydrogen and carbon capture.

On Wednesday, US climate envoy John Kerry was joined by Bill Gates, Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff, Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat and several others to announce in Davos that the number of companies had gone from more than 30 to 55.

Sweden, India, Japan, Denmark, the United Kingdom and other countries also joined the partnership, first launched by the US and World Economic Forum.

Gates says “so many green products carry a price premium” compared with established fossil fuel technologies and that “the way you get rid of that is scale up the production.”

The world's top climate scientists warn that greenhouse gas emissions must be sharply reduced this decade to keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh Government has signed three MoUs for generating green energy while big-ticket company heads held discussions with Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit.

The state government has signed an MoU with Aurobindo Reality Infrastructure for generating 6,000MW of green energy. Special Chief Secretary Karikal Valaven signed on behalf of the state while Aurobindo Director Sharatchandra Reddy signed on behalf of the company.

The second MoU was signed between the state and Greenko for generating 8,000MW of green power. Karikal Valaven and Anil Chalamsetti of Greenko inked the pact.

The third MoU was signed with Ace Urban Developers for setting up a decarbonized manufacturing unit at Machilipatnam. Karikal Valaven and Anil Chalamsetti were the signatories.