Travelling in India over the last 10 days, I have been struck by the ebullience of the Indian people and the economy. India’s growth engine is in full gear and the economy is surging forward. Coming from the U.S., where the news is dominated by difficult issues of unemployment, soaring debt, and a weak economic recovery – and of course the Gulf oil spill, India’s news coverage seems void of these issues, and almost refreshing. It is a story of large deals, 34 percent year over year growth in car sales, booming housing and infrastructure construction, and a resurgent confiden......

India has the opportunity to wisely direct the investment that needs to be made. How should this be done? This should be tackled on several parallel fronts. Energy efficient products should be one of the first issues to be tackled. Lighting continues to be a need for the people who are either without electricity or suffer from hours of denied electricity service everyday. Cutting back from traditional incandescent, even fluorescent lighting towards more efficient lighting technologies, such as solid state lighting, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 90%. It should be recognized......

China, India and some of the emerging economies have bounced back from the global recession faster than the developed countries. This is obviously a good thing. This shows that increasing internal demand, and not the global economy, has been the major engine driving India’s growth. The anemic pace of growth in the economically developed countries also provides India a breather when it comes to energy prices. The peak oil prices of $147/barrel are a distant memory, as we resume our petrol consumption binge. We also have 20% of our people to bring into the electricity age, and another 50......

Copenhagen was a bust! There is scientific consensus that carbon emissions due to human activity and climate change are linked. Everyone agrees that it is critically important that carbon emissions need to be reduced. Then why is it so difficult for world leaders to agree on what needs to be done? Developed nations have caused the carbon problem through their conspicuous consumption. However, now all nations are being invited to participate in reducing their carbon emissions to help save the planet. Emerging nations are likely to see a direct hit on cost of energy and GDP growth, directly im......