In bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the 8th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and 2nd Mission Innovation (MI) the Indian delegation and US delegation found some common ground on coal and water issues. There is a lot of progress in clean coal technology in India and the U.S. Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, who led the US delegation, seemed keen to tap into that. “There was hardly any mention of the issue, climate change,” India’s Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan, who is leading the Indian delegation, said. We talked about how “to promote more research collaboration on the availability of water and its potability,” Harsh Vardhan said. “We need to integrate renewables into the grid, but for that thermal power plants have to be flexible.”The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) also met on the sidelines of the summit.

Source: Hindustan Times June 11, 2017 11:03 UTC