Optimistic in India | Years of Living Dangerously

I was told that if I wanted to see how the US will play a part in India's energy future, I should come here—a coal power plant, believe it or not, erected right in the middle of Delhi.

Mr. Ambassador, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I love the movie set—apocalyptic on the one side of the railroad tracks, on the other side of the railroad tracks, this wonderful solar field.

This is the problem and how we conquer it. This is now probably the single biggest pathway of our cooperation between the US and India in the years ahead: the clean energy space. Although 400 companies, Nordhoff companies from the US, are here in India looking very actively, I think what's really exciting is that this has caught hold here in a way that it never has before.

What are the challenges ahead here to meet the target that India has set? Just in solar, the financing challenge is about a hundred billion dollars. Wow! It's a hundred billion dollars of private capital, of government money, of India's resources. So, a huge challenge in getting that business climate right to actually attract that investment.

In terms of jobs, do the equation for us. What does this represent? We bring solar panels from Perrysburg, Ohio, from Pasola in water technology from Colorado, in Denver. So, we end up creating a lot of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Some of these panels are made in Ohio.

So, summer markets in the United States is not donating a time equipment or raw materials. Everybody makes money. Absolutely! Look, it's good for national security reasons, it's good to combat climate change, it's good for economic development reasons here in India, but also in the United States.

When I first got here, I saw nothing but problems. If you start examining the problems, they all become opportunity. I mean overwhelming opportunity. We're really optimistic about this space. We're really optimistic about the way the US and India have come together to tackle this challenge.