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Journalism of Courage
Madhav Pai is a thinker-practitioner who has been working on issues of urbanisation, climate change and environment.
The CEO of World Resources Institute (WRI), India, Madhav graduated from the University of Mumbai as a civil engineer and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Transport Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Under his leadership, WRI India had implemented several pioneering projects including the Indore Bus Rapid Transit, the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), the campaign for democratising public streets, and the National Electric Bus Program (NEBP).
Madhav is also a published author and has written several research papers and books on urban transport, urban planning, resilience and clean air.
He spoke to indianexpress.com on the tech tools developed by WRI India, their work with startups, the challenges of clean energy transition, issues with urban transit and the need to collect large amounts of data to make meaningful policy changes. Edited excerpts:
Madhav Pai: We have worked with more than 100 startups over the last 10 years. These are mostly in the areas of mobility, energy and land restoration. We do not fund startups. We mentor them, brainstorm with them, provide feedback on their solutions, and also look to showcase them at key events.
We look at “first practice implementation” in the field of sustainable cities, energy, landscape restoration and climate. We want to create a precedent in the government for adoption of new solutions or new tech, so that it becomes easy for ideas to flow in, and perhaps for startups to interact further with the Government to take the ideas forward.
Our work involves solving complex problems with data, analysis and research, and governments are involved one way or the other. We act as a bridge between the startups and the governments. We also share our data and research with startups, helping them to improve their products.
One of the initiatives is the Station Access and Mobility Program (STAMP) that works with Metro Rail agencies in various cities to enable multimodal integration of transportation. We work extensively on last mile connectivity solutions for Metro stations. During this programme, startups have come up with ride sharing apps, scooter sharing apps. It was like a testing ground for new ideas. Some of the key startups that were involved were, Tummoc —a journey planner, Zypp Electric, Journee, Bykerr, and Mobycy.
We also run a Land Accelerator, with a focus on restoration of degraded land. Through our assessment tools, we found that around 87 million hectares of land could be restored in India. This initiative, we feel, would essentially be driven by land restoration entrepreneurs. We are seeing some interesting tech being developed and showcased during this accelerator programme. Some of them, like robots to clean up borewells, have caught our attention. As for WRI India, we bring in our geospatial monitoring expertise into the mix.
We are also looking at helping the restoration entrepreneurs access debt through the Harit Bharat Fund, where we work with partners including community organisations and funders to bring in blended finance options to transform rural India.
TheCityFix Labs India is another initiative which is a platform that brings together entrepreneurs, technical experts and the public sector to implement nature-based solutions (NbS) on ground. For example, in Mumbai, we have a programme to provide for vegetable gardens on Municipal school roofs, sewage treatment systems, waterbody restoration and surface drainage solutions. We bring various startups working in these fields on a common platform and help them showcase their expertise to policy makers.
Madhav Pai: We use large amounts of data and geospatial analytics to build open source tools in the mobility, urban and environment space.
Our Energy Access Explorer is the first, open-source, online and interactive geospatial platform helping energy planners, clean energy entrepreneurs, and governments to identify high-priority areas for energy access interventions.
The tool incorporates remote sensing data as well as data from global, national, sub-national and census databases that are either publicly available or provided by international partners and local stakeholders. It also incorporates demographic data and data on social and productive uses to visualise demand for energy services.
We have been using these tools in the states of Jharkhand, Nagaland and Assam to help the government identify locations and solarise their healthcare or education centres. We bring all the data in one place and with the tool we can identify which school or public health care centre in a remote region is ripe for a solar intervention and for setting up a solar unit.
We have also built the India Energy Policy Simulator, an online tool which we customised for India, which looks at the impact of policy measures on India’s net zero goals. We can check for instance how green Hydrogen, electrification of freight, decarbonisation of cement sector can all contribute to India’s environmental goals. It is a quantitative assessment tool where we can check out various climate policy packages for India and their impact on environment, GDP and jobs.
Another of our tools is the restoration opportunity map, an interactive atlas and information management tool, which helps decision makers identify opportunities for restoration of degraded land. With the help of this tool, many countries have embarked on successful forest restoration strategies. They are slowing desertification and restoring woodlands with associated improvements in livelihoods and ecological health.
We are also working on the Bengaluru and Mumbai climate action plan, where we analyse the heat risk in urban settings, the vulnerable settlements with heat risk, and come up with strategies for mitigation.
We see that Mumbai’s Dharavi in summer is six degrees warmer than its neighbouring areas, and we have been able to demonstrate and quantify the heat island effect with our tools. We have not used sensors, but have used large amounts of data from flood modelling, greening assessment, spatial analytics, and use those insights to help policy makers.
Madhav Pai: We work on large public policy issues, with substantial societal impact focussing on energy, land restoration, transportation and urban services. We always wear a systems lens, and if we believe tech can solve the issue, then we go with it. Sometimes it is finance, sometimes it is regulatory issues that we need to solve. We see tech as an enabler. Tech certainly gives an opportunity to solve things at scale.
Madhav Pai: Our work on urban transit solutions comes out of our work that we do on integrated transport, electric mobility, road safety, data-led urban planning, and climate smart cities.
We find that there are tech solutions available for GPS and payments but public transport corporations have not adopted them. We need to work on enabling the interoperability of payments in the transport sector and any organisation or company with GPS data and battery data need to share the same with the larger ecosystem with the necessary safeguards. What we need to do is create standards and protocols for sharing and usage of such data. It is a regulatory challenge rather than a tech one.
We must note that even some basic data is not being collected by public transport corporations. There are startups and companies that work on products or solutions to challenges like crew scheduling or issues of network optimisation, but they cannot solve the problem if the data is not available. Urban transit optimisation is a big data problem with around a trillion data points and unless we start collecting data, we cannot move ahead.
Let us take a simple issue of financing e-buses. Banks are not keen to give loans because they are not sure of issues like battery life, or potential demand. If battery data and passenger data is made available to banks, it will help in easier financing and better loan tenures.
Madhav Pai: Battery storage is an absolutely critical component. If you take the case of Rajasthan, it has an renewable energy oversupply and it needs to store renewable energy for just four hours before it connects and supplies power to the grid. So we work with Rajasthan on battery storage policies. We work on offshore wind energy issues in states like Tamil Nadu.
Green hydrogen is the key to decarbonise large sectors of the economy and we are working along with the green hydrogen mission, we are also working with a few states on their policies. Critical minerals and next gen batteries are other key areas. We need to think of the demand, availability, and the way forward.
We are working on the use of renewable energy in a responsible manner. We are raising these questions to raise awareness and hope to get the answers.
Madhav Pai: Recycling needs to become a business in itself for it to work in a scalable and sustainable manner. Take the case of e-rickshaws. There are 1-2 million of them now in India. They use lead acid batteries which need to be changed twice a year. There is a huge opportunity for startups with the 2-4 million battery market solving issues with recycling, developing the next generation of batteries which need to be built for Indian dust and temperature conditions. A leaching lead battery can make things worse for everyone in the economy and the environment.
Even in the case of Lithium Ion batteries, for startups or companies to recycle, there needs to be a demand. I think we will reach the market size, where recycling becomes a business. However, we cannot wait for business activities and the market to grow and then come up with incentives or regulation for the sector. It is better to start these processes today and now.
We are working on the use of renewable energy in a responsible manner. We raise awareness on these issues and hope to get the answers.
We should not wait for things to become big enough, and then try to solve them. Since we know the trajectory of most of these technologies, it is better to begin building incentives, best practices and regulatory processes when the tech is in its nascent stage, so that when the market matures, companies can get going.
