ANNOUNCEMENTS
The need of the hour for Indian economy is to grow sustainably; climate-resilient infrastructure is an important socio-economic tool that has the potential of contributing to the economic growth of our nation. With this lens, this paper aims at elucidating the resiliency transition path of one of the critical infrastructure sectors – the urban power sector. The examination of the resiliency path would focus on the barriers to successful transition and associated stakeholders, critical success factors for transition and a framework to measure resiliency level. The study is based on secondary data from sources including World Bank, WRI, IEA, IRENA, IPCC, UNEP, KPMG publications, Government reports from Germany, Japan, India, UK and US, WEF, UN and research papers and incorporates a descriptive as well as an exploratory research design. A case study approach has been followed for studying the urban power sectors of Germany, Japan, UK and US for identifying best practices that can be adopted by Indian urban power sector after accounting for local considerations.
The findings of the study portray the obstacles being faced by Indian power sector in achieving resiliency, demonstrate critical success factors and best practices that the sector can adopt for successful resiliency transition and establish a potential framework for the measurement of urban power sector resiliency. Identified barriers include data, governance, institutional, monetary, natural, resilience capacity of infrastructure, societal and technical capacity. Best practices relate to R&D, energy efficiency and optimization, target setting, resiliency vision and strategy, stockholding, cross-sector alliances, decentralization and resiliency metrics. The framework for resilience measurement encompasses 5 lenses including urban infrastructure, governance, economy, society and environment. This study advocates that climate-resilient infrastructure has the potential to provide a socio-economic push to all stakeholders and calls for capitalising on this opportunity.
Keywords: Climate-resilient, Urban power systems, Climate change, Infrastructure, Sustainability.
