Context

• Recently, India and the USA have participated in a virtual ministerial meeting of the S.-India Strategic Energy Partnership (SEP) to review progress, highlight major accomplishments, and prioritize new areas for cooperation.

Key Takeaways (For Mains):

The SEP organizes inter-agency engagement on both sides across four primary pillars of cooperation:

• Power and Energy Efficiency, Oil and Gas, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Growth.
• The SEP also supports USA efforts under the AsiaEDGE initiative,which establishes India as a strong energy partner in the Indo-Pacific region.
• It also promotes continued bilateral R&D engagement on advanced civil nuclear energy technologies through the S.-India Civil Nuclear EnergyWorking Group.
• New areas of research ontransformational power generation based on supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power cycles and advanced coal technologies for power generation including carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) were also initiated.
• Best practices are being adopted through methodologies in energy data management and capacity building in energy modeling.
• Commitment to advance civil nuclear co-operatione. recent progress on the Westinghouse(USAs Electric Company) nuclear reactor project at Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh were also discussed.
• A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed to begin cooperation on Strategic Petroleum Reserves
• The both sides launched a public-private Hydrogen Task Force to help scale up technologies to produce hydrogen from renewable energy and fossil fuel sources and to bring down the cost of deployment for enhanced energy security and resiliency.
• A MoU was signed to collaborate on India’s first-ever Solar Decathlon in 2021,establishing a collegiate competition to prepare the next generation to design and build high efficiency buildings powered by renewables.

Back to Basics:

South Asia Women in Energy (SAWIE)

• The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) have officially launched the “South Asia Women in Energy(SAWIE) platform to promote women’s empowerment and gender sensitization in the energy sector in South Asia

Asia EDGE initiative

• The Asia EDGE initiative is a U.S. whole-of-government effort to grow sustainable and secure energy markets throughout the Indo-Pacific.
• Asia EDGE seeks to strengthen energy security, increase energy diversification and trade, and expand energy access across the region.