 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all our viewers from around the world. My colleague each way and I will jointly host today's Stanford Global Energy Dialogue. Over the last three months we have had extraordinary discussions with global thought leaders in energy that covered a wide range of topics from impacts of COVID-19 to energy access and climate change. The videos of these dialogues can be found at gef.stanford.edu. No dialogue on global energy can ever be complete without a deep dive into China and India. Together these two Asian giants comprise 36% of the world's population, 12% of the global GDP, roughly 30% of the world's primary energy consumption and about 35% of the world's CO2 emissions. They are also among the fastest growing large economies in the world. The development path that China and India individually adopt will have serious consequences not only on their own economy, security and the environment but of the whole world. Yi, over to you. Thank you Arlun. To explain what is going on in these two Asian giants, China and India, we have two very special guests who are both iconic entrepreneurs and energy trade blazers in China and India, Sumang, Sinha and Lei Zhang. Let me introduce both of them a little bit. Sumang Sinha founded Renew Power in India in 2011, where he is the chairman and managing director. Renew Power is the largest renewable independent power provider in India. Sumang is an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. He went to the management school at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and Columbia University. And Lei Zhang was a graduate of the London School of Economics. He founded Envision Group in 2007, which is now one of the largest renewable and digital energy companies in the world. In 2019, Envision acquired AESC, the battery arm of Nissan, making it a key player and electrification of transportation with batteries manufacturing in the United States, UK, Japan and China. Envision has also been a significant investor in charge point, auto grid and many other energy startup companies. In many ways, Sumang and Lei represent the future of clean energy transformation going on in China and India. In order to warm up everybody, warm up our speakers, panelists, and warm up the audience, let's start by having a quiz and a poll. First, as of 2018, what fraction of the electricity generation in China came from renewable energy, including solar, wind, hydro and biomass, geothermal? Now this A, B, C and D, please make your choice and we'll give you maybe 5 to 10 seconds. Okay, the answer is, let's see the poll. 25%, or 35% is on the select 25, and 45% select 12. The correct answer is 25%. I think the audience is getting close. Apparently, in the last few years, the renewable energy development has been quite exciting. According to BP statistical review, China generated over 7,000 kilowatt-hour electricity, out of which 66% come from coal, 4% from nuclear, and 3% from natural gas, 3%. Out of the 25% renewables, hydro was 65%, solar and wind at 35%. In terms of annual growth rate, renewables grow at 29% highest, nuclear at 19%, gas at 10%, coal at 6.5%. Remember the coal number is still 6.5%, even though it's low, but it's still something right there. Let's do the quiz number two. As of 2018, what fraction of electricity generation used in India come from renewable energy, similar thing including solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal? So the poll come back, 49% of people think it's 11%. Rank number two is 21% of people think it's 17%, and 20% of people think it's 5%. The correct answer is 17%. So you look at compare the number of India in China, where China was at 25%, India is now 17%. So India generated 1500 kilowatt-hour electricity, out of which 75% come from coal, 5% from natural gas, 3% from nuclear. So out of the 17% from renewables, hydro was half, the rest was solar and wind. Electricity generation grew at 6.3% annually, with renewables growing at 27% and coal at 5.2%. If I look at the coal number, India and China, they're quite similar, the growth, India was 5.2%, China was 6.5%. So now come to our panelists, Lei and Sumand. Thank you both of you so much for joining us, Lei and I, for both of you. It's early in the morning in California, so I think it's just we are just coming out from the dark, we are going to moving into the dark. So this is a good time to have a conversation. The pattern we see in China and India is that renewables are growing annually at 25%, yet it has a long way to go to catch up with coal, which is still dominating, the coal is still dominating, its growth is small, but not negative, it's not negligible, it's still about 5%, 6% also. Now Lei, in your view, what do you see the pathways China will take in the next few decades and all expat of energy, and how will it impact the world? We'll start from you. Thanks, Yi. There are three major trends in China energy industry. One is renewable energy development. The second one is digital. The third one is about market refer, and we are seeing these three major trends are reinforcing each other and create a magic effect. Renewable energy is going to be enabled by digital solutions. At the same time, China is making market reformation, especially for this trading system to allow more renewable energy being taken. So we see such a fast development for the three major trends, especially for the next five years. China today is making the 15th five-year plan. We will see renewable energy is going to be significantly increased. Most important thing is by 2025, we will see all the renewable energy, including energy storage, will have much lower cost than fossil fuel. So this is going to pass the critical point for China energy industry, and then everyone will see the new reality. So I think that the new consensus could be achieved in a few years time. People believe this net zero strategy for net zero emission is doable for the next 30 or 40 years. Thank you. I noticed in the last couple of years, you introduced a new term called synergy. In academia, we use a synergy a lot. We collaborate with other people. We said, coming from different areas, we call it a synergistic. The synergy is used. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by synergy? Yes, sure. So a few years ago, when I think about the future for energy, so I'm considering two things. One is about the cost for energy. Another thing is about the cost of the synergy. So even five or 10 years ago, I personally strongly believe we almost solved the cost for energy. So we are going to see two cents or one sense of renewable energy. So today we are able to see two cents renewable energy already. So cost of energy is not going to be issued. However, when the renewable energy become the mainstream, so the energy system is going to be reshaped and it becomes very much distributed. And also, the energy source is very intermittent. So in such a renewable energy, it dominates the world. So supply and balancing is becoming very challenging, especially coupled with electric vehicles. This random behavior, child behavior is also adding more variables. So we at the stage need the new grid. Think about the nature of the grid. The physical grid is about connecting and balancing. So we need new tools, which is digital grid. So it is able to connecting millions of renewable energy devices and also for this EV and storage at the same time to achieve the new balance. So that's a synergy that becomes very important in a renewable energy dominated world. I guess what I understand is now a different form of energy so strongly coupled together, really forming a need to have a system level of thinking. That's why you call it synergy. I think that makes a lot of sense. And not about this supply side, especially the presumers. So you see that production and consumption are embedding each other, also in a much detail level. So such kind of a synergy is also about supply demand synergy on local level. Yes, it makes sense. Now let me turn to Sumang. Sumang, please give us a holistic view of the energy landscape in India. How that is changing in the future and how will that impact the rest of the world? Well, thank you. And I'd like to thank the Stanford PCOT Center for inviting me for this panel discussion. It's terrific. It's a pleasure to be on this show with Lee as well, because obviously Envision is a major player in the renewable energy space. And in fact, we have a relationship with Envision as well, where they're supplying turbines to us. You know, the question that you've asked is a very fundamental one. I think if you look at the Indian market, it is going through very fundamental change. And I might say that we are actually in the middle of living through an inflation point in the power sector in India as we speak. So let me elaborate on that and tell you a little bit more about what's happening. Essentially, the power sector in India, so far, you talked about 1500 terawatt hours, which is the total size of the power market so far, which equates to about 370 gigawatts of total power generating capacity. Of that, two-thirds is coal-based power. And about 90 gigawatts of that, so roughly about 20-22 percent, is renewable energy. And in that, I'm not including hydro, so this is only grain and solar. And it generates about 10 percent of the total electricity mix in the country. Now, what has happened is that because the cost of renewables has come down through technology development and innovations in the sector, we are now at a point where renewable energy, certainly in India, and as we all know in many parts of the world, has now become cheaper on a pure cost of generation basis than any other form of electricity. So it's certainly cheaper than coal, it's cheaper than nuclear, it's cheaper than hydro, and I'm talking about new build for any of these plants. And so, you know, when you look at India's per capita consumption, today India's per capita electricity consumption is only a third that of the global average. It's a quarter that of China's and about a 15th that of the US. And India is a developing country, we are a fast-growing country, and so as we look to the future, the reality is that this number of per capita consumption is going to grow rapidly and is going to increase quite substantially. And so, even if we forecast, let's say 10 to 12 years out, and we say that the per capita consumption of energy of electricity in India, that it doubles in this time, that would lie essentially that we have to generate an additional 1500 terawatt hours in the next 10 to 12 years from whichever sources we can find. Now, to relate it back to the question that you asked, which is, what is the implication of India's energy choices on the world as a whole, the reality is that today India emits almost 8 to 9 percent of the total carbon emissions in the world. If we were to just simply replicate what we have done so far in terms of our electricity mix into the next doubling that we are going to have, then obviously that number of 8 percent will go to 16 percent, 17 percent. And therefore, all the emissions reductions that some parts of the world are trying to do will get negated by the increase in emissions from countries like India. And so therefore, the choices that countries like ours make is very fundamental in terms of determining this whole emissions scenario. And the reason we had an inflection point because of the genius of renewables implies that the good news is that the next doubling of our power sector in the next 10 to 12 years will be fundamentally different from the past 1500 terawatt hours that we have. And my feeling is, and my suspicion is that if you look at the next 1500 terawatt hours, almost two-thirds of that will actually come from renewable energy sources. And again, I mean only solar and wind. Now, that would still mean that the balance 500 has to come from somewhere. And that 500, therefore, will come from coal. So coal-based power will continue to increase, but renewables will increase much more substantially. And so therefore, when you look at our power supply basket, let's say 12 years out, let's say 2032, at which point, let's assume we're at 3000 terawatt hours in aggregate. Of that, about a third will come from renewable energy. But 50% will still be coming from coal. So it will still be a very large amount. But the good news is that the mix is shifting. And I think that we've faced the timeline out beyond 2032, figure of 2042, 2052. I think that mix is going to keep changing. Now, there are of course a number of issues that we have to deal with. And we'll talk about that I'm sure as we go forward in this conversation. But the good news is that today, there is a solution that exists for looking at a fundamentally different creation of a electricity sector than had been the case till very recently. And that is actually a cause for optimism for us in the future. Very good, Sumang. Thank you for your introduction to the Indian's energy landscape. Now, let me turn it back to Alun. Great. Lea and Sumang, thanks for joining us. You are both, as I said, iconic and leading entrepreneurs and you deepen the trenches of the renewable energy transformation that is going on. And as we just found out, the renewable energy sector is growing at more than 25% per year, which is absolutely staggering. So let me ask you on the challenges that you've seen on the ground level. What are the bottlenecks that you see that and if you remove them, it could grow even faster. And secondly, as you look ahead, what technologies and business opportunity do you see most promising and what technologies are missing? So give us the reality check of what's going on on the ground. Let me ask Sumang first and then we'll move to Lea. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So look, I think that in terms of the constraints, clearly there are a number of constraints. And sometimes it does feel that you're really in the trenches rather than above ground. But just to highlight a few, one of the problems in India is that while there is this massive opportunity because of this market size, the growth of the country, and the relative scarcity of energy consumption right now, the reality is that the power sector in India is still an unreformed sector. There have been some reforms, but those reforms are clearly by no means complete. So our entire distribution side, the utility side which faces the end customers, that whole sector is still unreformed and it is owned by different state governments of India. And the quality of management is not very good and the financial health of these utilities is not very good. And because they're the ones that we have to sign PPAs with, that weakness in their financial health unfortunately tends to feed back into us as well. And so we have to be very careful about how we manage our exposure to them and how we manage our financial situation and so on. So that's one issue. The second issue Arun is that when you look at the fact that we have today 370,000 megawatts of installed capacity from all sources of electricity today, coal, renewables, hydro, nuclear, bio, etc. The ask of the renewable energy sector is to create another 370,000 megawatts in the next 10 to 12 years. Sorry, 370,000 megawatts and 370 gigawatts. And so therefore the physical aspect of executing this large amount of capacity in terms of land acquisition, in terms of connectivity to the grid, in terms of actually buying the equipment and installing it, that is going to be pretty, I think it's going to be a pretty terrific task. Certainly we're happy to put our shoulder to the wheel and push as hard as we can. And I think not just us, but many companies will have to do the same if you're to meet this target. The third thing that we have to also consider, which is very important, is if renewables go from 10% of the total grid to 30%, then the grid management itself and the grid build-up itself will have to undergo some very fundamental changes. And today while the government is taking a lot of steps to really improve their ability to manage the grid and, you know, address the whole issue of intermittency, a lot of that management still has to play out. And so to segue a little bit into the second part of the question that you asked, which is what kinds of technologies therefore will be critical for renewable energy, I think the generation side is pretty clear right now, costs are coming down, the visibility of the future is fairly clear cut. And so I think that's not an area that is going to require a lot of intervention. I think there is going to be a natural secular decline in costs as we go forward. And in the areas where there will need to be a lot of technology intervention is really in the, is in the area of intermittency management where things like digital, I think that we talked about earlier is going to be very critical and issues around storage solutions, whether it is through battery based solutions or some kind of hydrogen based solutions. And that is going to be very critical to see. And I think thirdly, and we're not talking about that really right now, but is, you know, scenario also, which consumes a lot of energy is the mobility sector. And I think again there, how hydrogen becomes part of that mix, whether batteries are the solutions, whether they're chargeable or replaceable batteries. And then those are things that still have to play themselves out. And I'm pretty interested to see how all of that, that whole sector evolves. But my hope is that a lot of that, whether it's hydrogen or batteries charging actually happens through renewable energy sources. Because if we just do that charging through coal based power, then actually that in some ways defeats the purpose. So I think those are the areas where I would see a lot of technology interventions going forward. Thanks so much. So Le, give us a reality check of what's going on in China. Where are the bottlenecks? What are the opportunities? Where are the technologies that are missing? What technologies really give you hope? So give us a landscape. I think the biggest fundamental challenge is people's underestimation of how fast renewable energy could develop and how fast the renewable energy costs can be reduced. So a difficult example. So five years ago, when China made a five-year plan for solar, they think they make an ambitious solar plan. So they want to increase 100 gigawatt solar within five years from 2015 to 2020. But it seems, so by this year end, China's five-year new installation for solar is going to reach 250 gigawatt. So people sometimes lack understanding this kind of nonlinear development of the renewable energy cost and also the penetration rate. So, you know, the consequence from this underestimation is about people are not proactive actively to design the policy, not proactively to make the market reform, market design to adopt more renewable energy. The financial institution will be more less reluctant for divestment of fossil fuel assets. And for education system and for co-work exit, all kinds of social things will not be planned in advance. So that's the challenge from this underestimation. So from the base model wise, as I said, synergy is become more cost of the synergy is most important than the cost of energy. So digital solution definitely is going to be very important because it provides the flexibility of the system. At the same time, also there are some physical flexibility can be provided by battery storage EV as well. So from my point of view, once one step ahead, when people think about what is the future energy company, I strongly believe so when renewable energy take 50% or 80%. So the system risk become very high. The synergy cost will be extremely high. So the new company, new energy company will be the company help your customer to manage their energy market risk. So this type of company through the software, through AIoT, through this orchestration of a multiple devices of renewable energy and also storage and load devices together to create such a kind of virtual power plant or integrate EV with the digital network. This kind of company to provide risk management solution to your customer. So that's the new base model, what I strongly believe. Well, wonderful. Let me ask both of you. I mean, both of you are entrepreneurs. You've started your businesses about roughly a decade ago, maybe a little bit more in Leys case and so on. You're going to be 10 years old next year. And you scale them rapidly. I mean, this is an unbelievable story for both of you. What are the, in your experience, what are the lessons that you have learned that you want to share with other entrepreneurs regarding the ability to rapidly industrialize and the scale energy technologies and scale the businesses? Because there's a general concept that it's going to take 20 years from any new technology for 25 years. How do you reduce the time given that we have to address not only the market things that you've already talked about, but also climate change. How do we reduce that to 10 years that you all have done? What are the lessons learned? Lay, you want to go first? Sure. So from my personal experience is, so we started with wind turbines, but we take a different approach. We created the software defined wind turbines. So when we started with storage, we create a network defined storage. So we're combining software with hardware nicely. So now most of the product company, so when they scale up, so they normally focus too much on the hardware or some software company, they purely work on the software solutions. So for energy business, especially playing with renewable energy system, I think the combination of software and hardware will give you a very unique advantage. Because for conventional product company, they are not very savvy on the latest AI, IIoT or big tech technology. But for the typical software company, they are true IT house, but they are lack of understanding of physics and engineering things. So the company, if they want to be successful in this energy business, so I think it's better to combine the both. Perfect. Sumant, your thoughts? Yeah, Arun, I think look, our sector, you know, we were very fortunate that when we started our company about 10 years ago, at that time, renewables in general was just beginning to become a more important aspect. The whole issue of climate change was certainly becoming more relevant. And we've seen some significant growth over the last 10 years. But I think the growth that we've seen so far is nothing compared to the growth that is yet to come. And therefore, my advice to any young entrepreneur looking at the sector is to get into it. It's not too late. I think it's still reasonably early days in our sector. The sector is going to scale up very dramatically. And therefore, there will be tremendous amounts of opportunities in whichever part of the value chain you get into. For example, if you're in the equipment manufacturing, where part of the value chain like lays, for example, or Envisionist, then you can do some of the things that he talked about combining software and hardware. If you're in our part of the value chain, which is the IPP part of the value chain, you know, there are lots of, there are going to be lots of opportunities around how do you manage the assets that you've already put up on the ground? For example, in our case, now we have close to 6,000 megawatts of assets that are operating. And two years from now, we'll have cross 10,000 megawatts. And the question of how can we get the best out of those assets is a very important one for us. If we can even improve the performance by 1% across our entire fleet of turbines and solar farms, that results in a fairly significant number for us. And there again, using software and digital and analytical tools is going to be very critical. And there are a few companies that are starting off in that area. So if I look at somebody getting into the sector right now, I think there are a couple of things which are very important beyond, of course, the immediate business opportunity. And I'm going to give you an answer, which may sound generic, but is relevant for our sector as it is for perhaps other sectors, is don't try to do something small at this point, you know, opportunity space is vast, going with ambition, going to try to create something really big. And because ours is a sector which has been so far a staid, unexciting sector, you know, there is an opportunity to come in with new thoughts, new ideas, new views, move rapidly and take advantage and get market share through any innovative ideas that you may have. The second thing which is very important to my mind, which is often underestimated, is the issue of actually building your organization capability. You know, you talked about handling scale. And the issue of handling scale is critical. Of course, you have to learn to execute a scale. You have to raise a bunch of capital. You have to go and deal with the government. You have to deal with the equipment providers and so on. But one of the very fundamental things that you also have to do is that you have to build an organization that can scale rapidly as well. And if you don't invest in building the organization, at some point you're going to run out of runway to grow your business anymore. And so that is not going to sit well with your ambition to grow the business or sit well with the market opportunities that exist. So I would advise any young entrepreneur who's thinking about getting into our sector, certainly have an idea that's critical, but also in parallel as you scale up, do not look at building your organization structure. It's as important as building your business or building your product. So if I look at the combination of both your answers, I'm looking at team. I'm looking at looking at a system with hardware, software as a product. And, you know, and looking to and thinking big and not to think small. I mean, that's what I'm gathering, looking at, you know, just listening to both of you. This is terrific. Let me hand it over to E for the next set of questions. Yeah. Thanks, Alun. Sumang and Lei, you know, the reason we are having a Zoom dialogue right here is because of COVID-19. If it was not because of COVID-19, we'll have you face and face on Stanford campus, right, having our global energy forum already. Now talking about COVID-19, with energy and climate change, the relationship, there are interesting observations right here. Let me just point out a few, right, to pick up your thoughts. You know, certainly we saw here in California on the road for quite a while, you see less cars. You know, potentially the air quality gets better. However, we also have California fire right here. That's a different story, you know, in the past week also. Sumang, right, if I look at, look at India. India ran a really interesting experiment by gigantic experiment. Prime Minister Modi encouraged the whole nation and said, let's turn off the light at 9 p.m. April 5th for nine minutes. That was a really gigantic experiment, right? This, I mean, here's the main point is to show the whole nation we can still act together to do something to fight COVID-19. And we can go from a hopefully state to have a hope, right? And this is wonderful. But certainly you think about energy implication to the grid. That's a very interesting, but this is also shown as an example. You can act together. It's really powerful. Did this really teach any lessons on how to manage the grid? That could be utilized for deep renewable penetration. You know, just throw out one example on this. Sumang, probably you can go first. I'll come to late in a few minutes. So, you're absolutely right, that the Prime Minister Modi did ask everybody in India to switch off their lights for nine minutes at 9 p.m., you know, several months ago. And it did lead to the power demand falling by about 25%. But, you know, as you rightly observed, the grid was managed without too much of a hassle. Of course, you know, we had the Minister of Power and his bureaucrats sitting in control centers, making sure that nothing was going wrong. And we can't have that on a regular basis, clearly. But on a one-off basis, it worked. But the interesting thing is that subsequent to that, power demand during the period of the lockdown that was enforced for two, three months after that, power demand did fall by about 20%, 25% for a couple of months before it's now got to a point where in the month of August, it's been more or less, you know, at par with what it was last August. But for those two, three months, the way the government managed essentially is that they did, you know, they did a good thing in that renewable energy projects in India enjoy what is called must run status under the Indian grid code, which means that renewable energy projects have to keep operating. It's a way to incentivize renewables. Also, it's a recognition of the fact that renewables, if they are asked to back down, you know, lose the entire, you know, in terms of cost, there is no variable cost. So it's the last in the minute order of display that should be getting back down. And so the entire reduction of power demand actually came from the thermal side. And that really meant that coal based plant load factors actually fell, they were already at about 60%. And in the first two months, they probably fell below 50% or thereabouts, certain plants were shut down, but the system managed. And I think in some ways, I hope it's not a blueprint for the future because we don't want to have power demand fall to that extent, obviously at any point in time. But it's a blueprint in that variability in the grid can be managed. And I hope it's a lesson that policymakers have taken away that, and that should allow them and encourage them to have more renewable energy capacity coming into the grid going forward. And, you know, there is a lot of work going on on looking at intermittency management through as I said, storage solutions and so on. And frankly, you don't need storage for converting renewables to base load power. You need only storage to make renewable energy for customers. And in India, unlike a number of other countries, you will not have gas-based power being the balancing load, you'll actually have coal-based power being the balancing load. And coal requires maybe a couple of hours to ramp up and ramp down. And as long as you have storage to an extent that allows within two hours renewable energy to be forecast accurately, that's the only amount of storage that we actually require. And Shahin, that's been the big learning from this whole experience that the amount of storage required is actually not that sizable. And renewables, you can have a much higher penetration of renewables into the grid. And the cost of intermittency management is not that high. Yeah, Sumang, this is excellent. You know, this just keep reminding me the term of synergy. If this can be done really nicely, I mean, this really big positive impact. So Le, are there lessons learned from COVID-19 in the short term that can be used to address the climate change for the long term in your mind? I bet you have examples based on your observations in China. So I have some reflections on this COVID-19 relationship to the climate change. So initially, so if you see the fast development of the COVID-19 is make people think about this is a nonlinear system. So if you want to address such systematic risk, so we have to act at a very early stage and take very fast decisions and actions. Same thing. I think once this COVID-19 spread out, so it will be too late to contain it. So same thing for climate crisis. So if we miss the earlier time for prevention or early action, when it pick up, become the momentum, this kind of the system inertial will be too difficult for us to stop. And it will be almost irreversible. So for COVID-19, luckily, we human beings are able to developing vaccine. However, so there's no vaccine for climate crisis. Once the catastrophe is being developed, so it will be too late for mankind. So that's my reflection. No vaccine for climate crisis. We have to act early and take very rapid actions. Lay, I really like what you just said because it's so important. Let me repeat it. There's no vaccine for climate crisis. For everybody of us, we got to know that. No vaccine for that. Thank you so much for saying this and thinking through this. Alun, I will return back to you for you to ask the next question. Sure. Thanks, Lee. And it is interesting here about the vaccine for climate change. I'm hoping that technology could be a potential and early adoption of the technology could perhaps help. But you're right. I mean, there is, we have to act quickly. And one of the areas that we're seeing a tectonic shift that's going on in just a technological transformation is the area of transportation and the introduction of electric vehicles. Lithium-mine battery costs, I know E does a lot of research in that. Lithium-mine battery costs are approaching $100 a kilowatt hour in the next couple of years and which will make electric vehicles cost and range competitive with gasoline cars. Lay, you're building a Gigafactory in China. So my question to you is how far can the battery costs go down? Number one. And second, China has 3.3 million EVs on the road, which is roughly equal to that in Europe and US combined. So what is China doing that is enabling this transformation? Yes, if we look back 10 years ago, so the battery costs is almost $1,000 per kilowatt hour. So 10 years later today, we are able to reach the $150 per kilowatt hour or even less. However, within that two or three years, it will be almost certain we can achieve below $100 per kilowatt hour. But this is not ending point. So according to our study and the research, especially on this upstream value chain of raw materials, there's still big potential to going down further to eventually to be the around $50 per kilowatt hour, I think in five or six years time. So which is going to be totally change the game. So from the point you mentioned about Chinese government policy, I think the biggest motivation from China to promote EV is come from the environment pressure. So a few years ago, people are suffering a lot from this smoky weather. And also Chinese leadership made such a statement. The Green Mountain and the River is our new charger. So we are shaping the new value for environment. Such kind of mentality shift is accumulating this renewable energy production, equipment production also about EV production. So no, so for people giving the subsidy, buying EVs, give them green card plate, which is in China is so difficult to get a new card plate for your new cars. So for instance, well, my hairdresser a few years ago, I think five years ago, he bought a new EV. I'm quite amazed. I thought it is normally rich people buy EV. But he told me, okay, the reason he bought EV is it's operating cost is so cheap. At the same time, he doesn't need to wait like a few months to have to auction a new plate. Because with the EV is almost no, it will be immediately you get the green card. So it basically government policy. And this was driven initially by air pollution really mattered. And, you know, we were just talking before this discussion started so much with someone that now because of COVID-19, air pollution has gone down, you can actually see the mountains from about 200 kilometers away. Now that the air is clear. So someone let me come to you. India has air pollution issues as well. And is that driving the electrification? And of course, India has a massive fleet of two and three weavers more than cars. So which is quite unique in the world in terms of scale. So how difficult is it to electrify the transportation in India to get to maintain the clear sky so that you can see the mountains? And are you guys doing anything in the new part to provide the charging infrastructure for EV? So how are you thinking? What is how is India thinking and how are you thinking about it? Yeah, you know, I think clearly electric vehicles are very, very critical. Today, a lot of the pollution that we see in urban centers in India is vehicular in nature. And as you rightly observed, you know, with this lockdown that we've had over the last few months, the quality of air has improved dramatically. And it's been a real learning for all of us to see other than understanding theoretically what the benefits might be to actually live through the benefits, see clear skies, you know, see longer distances. And as you said, from certain cities in India now begin to see the Himalayas. And so I think we've all come to realize the benefits of having cleaner air. So hopefully that's something that stays with us, you know, post pandemic going away, which hopefully will happen and not to longer distant future. But to answer your question about EVs, the government certainly sees with the need to have an EV rollout happening relatively fast. They're still thinking through what are the right incentives and mechanisms for making that happen. So at this point, there are no clear, I think are not sufficient incentives that have been given to really get a lot of the large car companies to start moving to EV manufacturing. We don't really see that happening. But I do see that there is a push towards moving towards moving public transportation, buses and so on towards electric vehicles. And as you also rightly observed, two-wheelers and three-wheelers are moving towards becoming electric. And that perhaps is going to happen faster than it will happen for passenger cars, for example. And then the reason for that is that two-wheeler and three-wheeler operators, I think, are seeing the economic value of having electric batteries. And therefore, just purely because of the commercial reason, there's a lot of movement among that, which are mostly commercial in nature towards moving towards electric vehicles. And I think that really is what has been driving it so far. The government certainly wants to incentivize much more going forward. And I think policies and plans are in the works. And I think we will probably see very soon that there will be more incentivization towards electric vehicles as we go forward. We clearly haven't had the kind of move yet that China has had. And so in that sense, I think we are playing catch up to some extent. In terms of what models will emerge and therefore what will we do, you know, one of the things that is not yet clear to me is whether we will have electric vehicles where batteries will get swapped out and then charged and then replaced, or will we have chargeable batteries? People are working on both options. And so I think it's not yet clear as to which model is finally going to succeed. And we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. So we are being a little bit cautious on looking at electric vehicles, because the only play for a company like ours really is to look at it from a charging standpoint. And at this point, as I said, because of this lack of clarity as to what model is eventually going to emerge, we don't want to venture into it until and unless we have a better sense of understanding as to how that might play out. Perfect. So as many of you know, if you've watched this dialogue before, we have a students section, which is really important. And so let me take this opportunity to introduce two highly accomplished Stanford students, Vivas Kumar and Hannah Sieber. Vivas is an MBA student at a Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before joining Stanford, Vivas was at Tesla where he was responsible for managing the whole battery supply chain strategy and procurement for Tesla. He had established that for Tesla. And Hannah is also an MBA student at the business school. And she's the co-founder and CEO of a company called EcoFlow, which is a pioneering portable company, power company that builds solar cells and rechargeable batteries to replace fuel generators. And she started EcoFlow from an apartment in Shenzhen and built it into a global company with sales in the US, EU, Japan and China. So over to you, Vivas and Hannah. Thank you very much, Professor Majumdar and Professor Tway for inviting us to be here today. And of course, once again, I'd like to echo the thanks to Leigh and Sumant for joining us here. So I'll start off with a question for Leigh and then hand it off to Hannah after that. Leigh, in a couple of your previous public presentations, you've stated that one cent per kilowatt hour pricing is on the horizon for renewables. And earlier today, you mentioned the importance of software, integrating software to the way that operators and service providers can work so that they can escape a downward spiral of unsustainable margins. Can you expand a little bit more on your idea around integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning and software solutions for consumption and distribution balancing? Sure. So the renewable energy system, what we can see is fully automated. So no one is running the wind farm. It's like autonomous driving, the wind turbine running by itself. And the solar farm as well, also with storage. And these kind of renewable devices, they are driven by very unpredictable weather system from solar, from wind, and this energy and being transferred to the substation, to network, and to the electric vehicles, and to the air conditioners, and to the homes. So what we can see is this new renewable energy system has become very automated and interconnected and also intermittent and unpredictable. So especially we are coming to a stage to this, the renewable, our demand is going to be shaped by the supply. In the past, supply is determined by demand, but now demand is shaped by supply. So you can see lots of flexibility is needed by the system. So that's why we can see that eye conditioners could provide flexibility. Or the electric vehicle can most of the time become the stationary storage when it's ever moving. So this kind of energy exchange and the flexibility injection to the system, so they are not the only one devices. So these devices become the network defined devices. So because you have to trade with the system, using how much energy you are going to give back, how much energy you are going to curtail, and at what time, at what place, and with which counterparty. So lots of data is going to be feeding to the one machine, and this one machine also to dealing with the multiple devices. So lots of data is not going to be worked by conventional human operators. So this kind of billions of devices acting together, you need such kind of machine learning mechanisms. And also to the best way is take people out of this machine loop. That's what Envision said that we are going to create the machine social network. Within the machine social network basically is IOT plus AI. So to create such kind of automation, intelligent automation. So that's my explanation. Awesome. Another one for you Le. So last year China was the world's leader in both coal and renewables installations. And as we look ahead to the release of China's 14th five-year plan next year, what are your expectations around how renewables expansion policy will change into the new plan? Yes, I'm quite optimistic. So I would expect at least 100 gigawatt renewable energy will be added for the next five years every year. However, maybe there's still some people think they are going to add lots of coal-fired power plant as well. But I think that's, you know, even you make a plan, people prove the plan sometime is not accurate. So I strongly believe by 2025 renewable energy will be grow from today's 15 percent non-fossil fuel energy, including hydro from 15 percent to around 22 percent. You know why? Although there's some company is still in favor or is still like to invest fossil fuel, but their motivation for investment for fossil fuel have been changed. In the past, there's only for, you know, the production. But this same category of investor, so they are also investing on renewables. So they realize renewable is more cost-competitive. The reason why they are still investing on the coal-fired power plant is because they want to combine coal-fired power plant with renewable together to become a steady supplier. However, as I said, the storage cost is dropping dramatically. So within two years time, I think the cost of storage energy for per kilowatt hour will decrease below two U.S. cents per kilowatt hour. Then the storage is going to replace the coal power plant to be the best supplement of renewable. So that will become new norm. Today, lots of investors haven't realized that. But in two years time, when the price is come to their level, then people are rational. They will realize the fossil fuel power plant will become a steady asset. So then renewable plus energy storage, that's the ultimate solution. So that's why I'm so optimistic. Thank you, Le. We're excited for your optimism. And Sumat, turning to you. You stated in a Bloomberg interview last year that renewables businesses are often misunderstood by equity investors. How is the push towards ESG investing changed equity investors' perceptions of the power sector? Well, you know, I made that remark, Hannah, in the context of equity investors primarily in India. And what happened in India is that in the beginning, there were a number of private companies that got into the coal-based sector. And a lot of them did not plan their projects properly. They went ahead without proper access to coal, without proper power purchase agreements, and so on. And so they unfortunately came to grief. And so did, along with then, their investors. And so investors therefore got burned quite badly in some of those investments. And so therefore, when now renewable energy companies go to some of the same investors, I think investors have the view that, look, this is, you know, a power sector, another version of the same power sector investment opportunity. And therefore they react with the same trepidation or apprehension, arising out of the losses of investing in the coal sector in India. Unfortunately, what they don't realize is that renewables is totally, totally different. We don't have any fuel risk. You know, we don't set up a project without power purchase agreements in place. And so therefore, two of the biggest risks are actually addressed in a fairly straightforward manner in renewable energy projects. So that was the context in which I made those remarks. But to your broader question about ESG, I think ESG is clearly a massive phenomenon. I think it's only going to grow as we go forward. We're just at the infancy of that whole move at this point in time. And we are seeing more and more large sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, institution investors, beginning to start shifting their focus, even even college university endowment funds and so on are now saying, we don't want to invest in coal. And as that noise becomes more and more, two things will happen. And you're interestingly seeing some of that play out. Number one, people will become a lot more wary and careful about investing in coal based projects. So that automatically will begin to go down as, as people see the reluctance of international investors or any kind of investors to invest in coal projects. So coal projects will just be much harder to get off the ground. That is one. The second very interesting thing, and I don't know whether you guys have seen this or not, but probably would have given the fact that you're all smart Stanford MBA students is that if you look at the market cap of Exxon Mobil, for example, a few years ago, it was the biggest market cap stock in the world at about a $400 billion market cap. Today, its market cap is down to $150 billion. Very interesting, right? A company like Orsted, which is a pure, which is a, which is a Danish wind energy company does mostly offshore wind, their market cap has gone up almost three X in literally in the last one year. And their market cap is now about $70 billion. Next year as market cap is now about $140 billion. And so you're getting to a point now where you're going to start seeing the large renewable energy companies suddenly go up in value higher than the incumbent large oil and gas companies of the world. And when that shift begins to happen, more and more, it will give more ammunition to the renewable energy companies to start raising capital more easily and at better valuations. And therefore, more capital will automatically come to the focus flow into those companies. And so that's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is really what we're in the beginning stages of. Now, Tesla, where of course you work, is an extreme example of that, where the market cap of Tesla goes up at 10% almost every day. And it's now up at $450 billion as of at least this morning, I don't know where it might be now, maybe another 10% higher. But the market cap of Tesla is now bigger than as we all know, than all the oil and then all the auto companies on the other side put together. It's simply unbelievable. So the power of ESG investing, I think is just beginning now. And a lot of boards, hopefully including ours, will move up to the rising tide. Thank you, Sumanth. One more question for you. Financial inclusion, access to capital and renewable energy development, go hand in hand, just in the way that you described it with ESG investing. But also, when it comes to sort of at the individual customer level, that's true. Can you talk us through some of the steps that you would like see being implemented towards greater financial inclusivity and whether traditional financial institutions will continue to seed to institutions like shadow banking in the long term in India? Yeah, so that's a broader financial market question. And what is clearly already happening in India is that under the current prime minister's efforts, we now have a situation where every single individual in the country has been allowed to open a bank account. And by doing that, and a certain amount of money has been put into their account. And that has now made it possible for all the subsidy schemes that used to operate earlier imperfectly, because they used to have to go through multiple channels, now can be paid on a targeted basis directly to the end consumer or the end individual. And so for example, giving power sector subsidies, where earlier you were giving a subsidy to all agricultural consumers of power by essentially putting tariffs for agricultural consumption down to almost zero. Now you can actually start charging people the actual cost of power and separately give them a subsidy directly into the bank account. And you can give it to a much more targeted basis, much more to the needy people rather than the rich, let's say the rich farmers. And I think that is going to make the whole issue of subsidies a lot more efficient. And it is also therefore hopefully going to bring down the subsidy bill. And at the same time, lead to better outcomes. So that is something that is really happening as a result of this whole issue of financial inclusion that now the government has really been pushing on very rapidly and very fast. But behind this, there is another aspect of financial inclusivity at a much more macro level, which is really at the level of countries on a multilateral basis. This energy transition that we are in the midst of, the question is, is a ton of carbon saved in India versus a ton of carbon saved in Europe? Should we not be looking at the cost of a ton of carbon saved all over the world and should money then not flow entirely without boundaries and without borders into whichever are those schemes in whichever countries there might be, where you can actually save in the most cost efficient manner that one ton of carbon? And that is something that is really not happening right now. What you're seeing is people are still investing and devoting all this money or subsidies or stimulus programs, green stimulus programs within their boundaries. And so it could very well be that the money that the world as a whole is spending today on carbon emissions, reductions, initiatives are actually being spent unwise things. And we have to find ways of targeting that spending in a much better, more effective manner. And it could be that perhaps all the money has to go to Africa for all I know, right? Or maybe it stays in Europe. But there should be some analysis of that. And I don't see that happening. People are still very insular. And to the point that we were discussing about COVID earlier, you can see off your boundaries and prevent people from coming into your country and thereby stave off COVID. But you can't stave off climate change by shutting your boundaries. Because we're all really in the same globe together. And so therefore we have to act much more multilaterally. And especially when it comes to financial expense. Thank you, Sumant. We have one last question from students. And this is for both Sumant and Lei. As we've talked about earlier today, one point of tension is the fact that on one hand, China and India have rapid industrialization plans. But developed nations have said that there is a tension between those rapid industrialization plans and the Paris Accords. So how would you advocate to your governments to balance the clean air mandates on one hand with continuing to build coal to provide the economic growth tailwind? Should I go first? Yes, please. Okay, thank you. So look, at the Paris climate Accord, India made some fairly gutsy commitments. One of those was to essentially get renewable energy up to 40% of the total power generating capacity by 2030. Another was to increase the forest cover by a certain fairly significant percentage. And the third was to really improve energy efficiency of the economy by a certain percentage again by 2030. So, you know, we, I think as a country went over and above what might have been expected of us. And we are now very seriously and very earnestly trying to move down that path as much as possible. And I think we're going to be quite successful in actually meeting most of our INDC commitments. Now, you might argue that those commitments could have been a little bit steeper and so on. But given that we started from, and this is back in 2015, keep in mind at a point when renewable energy was still more expensive than thermal power. And so therefore to make that commitment at that time, I think, as I said earlier, was was a gutsy thing to have done. And by 2030, it might very well be that we exceed those targets. Now, at the same time, the reality is that mentioned in my opening remarks, that to support India's growth, given a very poor per capita consumption of electricity, we will need to have other sources of power generation coming in as well. And those will necessarily have to be cold. Now that doesn't mean that we're going to build a lot more new cold plants. But the issue is we already have existing cold plants where the plant road factors are very low. And so those can just be increased. So there will be therefore an increase in carbon emissions from the country. But as a percentage of our GDP, it will come down. And if you look at almost any metric of carbon emissions per per capita or per unit of GDP, you will find that India is already much, much lower than most of the developing most of the developed countries are. So, you know, without without being too, I guess patriotic for one of a better word, I would say that it is really more income, it is really incumbent more on the developed countries to bring their emissions to come down faster than it is on developing countries like India, which are still on the development path for us to look at curtailing beyond what we've already committed to curtail, which is quite significant by the way. And let's hope that in the US, there is a more positive outcome in the elections from a climate change perspective, so that the US actually does join the bandwagon of countries like India and China. Lay, any response to that? Yes. As I said, so when I, so there are about two categories of people. One is the investor, another category is the government. When I talk to the CEOs of Chinese big utility companies, so most of them already realize the co-client is going to become the strategy asset. So the, the only reason they are still investing a small amount of co-far plant is because the combination with renewable to be able to export through the high voltage line. So again, as I said, that's, that's the signage issue, the synergy between renewable and fossil fuel to give the stable output. However, so we can easily convince them that storage energy storage is going to become the new code. We already see the energy storage in lots of market is replacing gas power stations. So which is only a few hundred hours a year can be easily replaced by energy storage with the decreasing cost of energy storage. I think they can also replace the co-fire plant on the flexibility. So then I think so, which have become very apparent for people to, to choose energy storage. Regarding the category of government, I'll give you an example, the Jiangsu province. So when I talk to, Jiangsu province is the richest province in China, just close by Shanghai. When I talk, when I talk to the leader of Jiangsu province energy sectors, so they told us for the next five years, they are going to build 50 gigawatt wing and a solar. Do you know how much coal plunge they are planning? They only planning two gigawatt coal plunge. However, this two gigawatt coal plunge isn't, is just as a backup, which means most like if the system works well, if the flexibility or synergy issue gets solved, they may not need this two gigawatt coal fire plant. So what I can see is on the government policy sector, so not only government need this top level target for renewable energy target, but also this target should be able to break down to the individual province. So the motivation behind the Jiangsu province is come from their renewable energy target, which has already been assigned to them, which have pushed them to have to develop renewable energy. So I'm seeing in China, so the trend is doing well. So with next a few years, when the cost improve further, so renewable definitely is become more popular. So we have 10 minutes left and we want to ask as many questions from the audience. So Samantha and Lei, we requested some short quick answers. And so let me start with Yi. Yi, you want to ask the first audience question? Yes, of course. A lot of good questions coming up, right? So the first one is from our friend, Jad Verden. I think Jad doesn't mind, I mentioned his name. What role will nuclear energy play in the future generation mix for China and India? So do you want to go first? Yes, sure. So I think that nuclear is not going to play a big role, certainly in India. It takes, I think, too long to build. The costs are very expensive. The flexibility is not that high. And so I see really nobody who's going to be willing to invest in large nuclear facilities. There's also the issue of getting fuel and then disposing of the nuclear waste. So it's just a very complicated thing to be putting up right now. And I really don't see a lot of interest either from governments or from the private sector in investing in large nuclear plants going forward. And Lei? I think the nuclear in China will be marginal as well. So economic wise, so nuclear has no advantage. If we look at the cost of renewable, it's going down. Nuclear cost is going up. So the facts have, the reality have already proved the simple is better. The modular is better. So wind and the solar is simple and modular. It's not complicated. Complicated engineering things are always costly. It's not a way for energy. Back to you. Okay. Great. Next question. When we discuss renewables penetration in terms of percentage, do we predict the denominator that is the total demand correctly? That is, do we include EVs? Or when the demand keeps increasing, you think renewables will face problems of catching up in demand? Lei, do you want to go first? Yeah, I think it is. So for our scenario, we are assuming still 3 to 5% the energy growth, especially for electricity growth. Because the big theme is about electrification. Lots of fossil fuel, liquid fossil fuel or solid is turning to electricity. So we definitely, we should take into account for the overall electricity growth. So our scenario is definitely included. So in our case, we assume about maybe a 6% growth in electricity year on year. And I think to be honest with you, in the next few years, we're going to be hard-pressed even just to meet that incremental demand from renewable energy. It's going to require a lot of construction of renewable energy projects to meet that 6% demand growth. Yeah. Next question, Suman is for you. This is from our Stanford alumni, Professor Stan Wittingham. He won the Nobel Prize last year for inventing lithium-ion batteries. So he's a big support of Stanford Energy Event. Stan has a question for you about two and three wheelers. It's a combustion base. Does India have the requirement to have all these two three wheelers to go all electrical and ban the combustion base? And he believes China's already been doing this. What's India's policy on that? So you know, to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the policy is on two and three wheelers, but I do know that a fairly significant percentage just by anecdotal observation I can see is already electrified. And that is the area that the government believes is going to be the easiest area to look at electrifying to begin with. That along as I said with suburban bus transportation. So that's the area that they're going after. I don't know that an explicit target has been set by the government so far, but certainly the move is in that direction. Okay, so this is about storage. I think we all agree that storage is going to be very important in the future. But this is about seasonal storage. What do you expect the storage solution to be to manage large differences in seasonal consumption within summer and winter? Any thoughts, Lay? I think hydrogen. Hydrogen will be very critical for the cedar storage. Okay, Sumant? So, you know, I think that there is sufficient flex in the coal-based capacity in India that you can ramp up and ramp down the coal-based capacity to give you in some way seasonal balancing that is required. But in India, there is also this benefit that you have a natural inverse correlation between solar and wind. So, you have the majority of the wind that grows in the monsoon months, which is, let's say, some is made to August, September. And that's also some of the time when, therefore, because of that, that the cloud cover that the solar radiation also comes down. So, in some ways, it is an automatic balancing out of the too. That happens. Let me ask you a question to Lay. I mean, this is, you made a very important statement. There is no vaccine for climate crisis. And so, the question out here is from one of the audience members, when is it too late to address climate crisis? Is it too late now? Define what is late too late. What does it really mean? I think probably it's already being quite late now. But we should never give up. We still have a chance. So, because the system is still quite nonlinear, we don't know that clear as yet. But according to scientists, so we're almost running out of time. So, we have really speed up. Great. This has been a wonderful conversation. Sumant and Lay, do you have any final, just quick statements before we sort of wrap up? Sumant, you want to go first? Yeah, sure. Thanks a lot for inviting me for this absolutely fascinating session. And I got to learn a lot from Lay as well. Some of the questions are really insightful. And getting asked a question by a Nobel audience, that's pretty fabulous as well. So, very exciting session. Just to give you a quick answer on the last question that you asked, whether it's too late. I think it is too late. I think in some ways we've kind of missed the bus on the one and a half degrees sometime ago. We've probably also missed the bus on the two degrees. And I think we're fighting a losing battle right now for three degrees centigrade temperature change. So, but I guess we have to do as much as we can because otherwise we're going to be looking at even more dramatic consequences to the environment and to climate change. So, I think we have to just keep pushing at it as hard as we can. And I think everybody needs to put in whatever effort they can to try to stave off as much of the climate change that is upon us and will continue to be upon us. Lay, final words of wisdom. You know, although there's no vaccine for climate crisis, but there's still some hope. So, if we have to find a vaccine for climate crisis, that's the renewables. We have to inject as much as renewable into our energy system. That's probably that's the only vaccine. Well, Lay and Suman, thank you very much for joining us today for this wonderful discussion. And I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleague each way, as well as our students Viva Sanjana for joining and and all the people in our team at Stanford, who made this global energy dialogue possible. And thank you to all of you from joining us around the world. We hope you found today's global energy dialogue informative and relevant during these unprecedented times. And please join us two weeks from now for a conversation with Anne Finooken, vice chairman of Banco America on sustainable energy finance. And again, please register on our website, the GEF.stanford.edu and note the date and time, September 15th, 8 30 to 10 am California time. And with that, thank you again. Let's adjourn.