Agro Photovoltaics (APV) is a unique model of collocating food and fuel. While safeguarding traditional livelihood, it creates new income avenues for farmers. In this Op-ed, the authors observe that government initiatives such as PM-KUSUM can act as catalysts to take this model forward, empowering farmers along the way.

This is CSTEP's Annual Report for the year 2019-20.

In this year’s annual report, we look at an Evolved CSTEP. We trace our journey, highlight our biggest impact stories, reflect on where we are in achieving our vision, and our efforts towards consolidating research to better enable this. Over the last year, we have consolidated our research into five areas: Energy & Power; Climate, Environment & Ecosystem; Artificial Intelligence & Digital Lab; Materials & Strategic Studies; and Computational Tools.

The emergence of app-based cab aggregators (CA) has disrupted the urban transportation system and transformed how people make travel choices in Indian cities. These choices impact public transport ridership, vehicle ownership, congestion, parking etc. Understanding the extent of these impacts is critical for efficient transportation planning and policy. Shared mobility platforms such as Ola and Uber have made commuter travel habits trackable and collect real-time data at every point of a commuter’s journey.

According to Niti Aayog, the demand for energy in India is set to grow from the current level of 5,311 TWh to 18,635 TWh by 2047, an increment of 3.5 times. As demand for energy observes an unprecedented increase, it becomes pertinent to explore novel sources of energy, such as distributed renewable energy systems (DRES).

The domino effect set in motion by COVID-19 is a blunt reminder that under-prepared systems will have to bear devastating shocks. Climate change is one such inexorable force that not only amplifies existing risks but also creates new risks to natural and human systems.

India is blessed with abundant sunlight. Tapping even 0.1% of the incident solar energy in 2019-20 would have given us nearly 3.5 times the total energy generated from all sources in the year! Currently, India's solar-energy generation utilises only about 0.001% of the incident solar energy. Leveraging this immense potential is crucial to power the country via clean energy.

In February 2015, the Government of India announced the ambitious target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy (RE) by 2021-22. This target comprises 100 GW solar, 60 GW wind, 10 GW biomass and 5 GW small-hydro. Today, the total installed RE capacity is expected to cross 70 GW and account for around 20% of the country's power generation capacity.

One consequence of the recent demonetisation was a push towards the digitisation of the economy - a move that will create transparency in the financial system. But this digital push must be accompanied by greater security of digital transactions to deal with the tsunami of cybercrimes that is bound to follow. India's enforcement mechanisms, laws and policies must be re-examined immediately to ensure that the theft of data or money is dealt with severely, swiftly and transparently.

One of the undisputed benefits of the recent demonetisation exercise has been the concerted push towards digitisation of cash transactions. Concomitant with this development has been the rapid growth in the use of smart devices, primarily mobile phones. Though digital payment systems have been in existence for a while, the last few weeks have witnessed an explosive growth in their use. While many welcome the idea of trackable, transparent and frictionless monetary transactions, there are significant risks associated with moving to these systems.

Emergency and disaster management has become a widely researched area in the last decade. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has been highly advocated for addressing the obstacles and improving decision-making in the event of a disaster. A number of ICT support systems and frameworks, both conceptual and application-based, have evolved over time to support the highly time and collaboration intensive task of emergency and disaster management. The use of ICTs like GIS has helped the relief worker to a great extent.