In climate discussions, India’s agricultural sector is often highlighted in terms of the likely climate impacts to the sector – due to heat waves and floods – but it is also a significant consumer of fossil fuels. Around 15% of India’s overall electricity demand comes from agriculture. Structural problems, including small land-holdings and a lack of adequate returns, make it hard to shift to cleaner sources of energy, even in cases where solar power could free up resources and improve livelihoods. Through Khetwork’s groundbreaking work on high-efficiency irrigation pumps, Victor Lesniewski is working to decarbonise agricultural energy use in the agriculture sector and also make farmers more productive to increase their revenues through the year. He and his co-founder Katie Taylor (who we also talk to in this episode about gender- and culture-related challenges for clean energy entrepreneurs) produce solar pump systems for smallholders that target the dry-season, when kerosene pumps are most costly. They share what they have learned about relocating a technology solution from Massachusetts to Maharashtra, why efficiency is key to reducing capital costs, and how to bring sceptical customers on board. When this conversation was recorded in May 2022 they had reached a production capacity of 120 pumps per week, and looking at financing options for further scale-up in an environment of rising input costs.

Further reading:

1. Khethworks: https://www.khethworks.com/
2. Managing the water-energy nexus is vital to India’s future, IEA 2021 :https://www.iea.org/commentaries/managing-the-water-energy-nexus-is-vital-to-india-s-future
3. Solar-power irrigation apparatus patent, Khethworks, 2019:https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190323508A1/
4. Solar water pumping for sustainable water supply, World Bank 2022:https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water/brief/solar-pumping
5. Covid-19 slows progress toward universal energy access, IEA 2022:https://www.iea.org/news/covid-19-slows-progress-toward-universal-energy-access
6. Net Zero by 2050, IEA 2021: https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
7. ETP Clean Energy Technology Guide, IEA 2021: https://www.iea.org/articles/etp-clean-energy-technology-guide
8. India Energy Outlook 2021: https://www.iea.org/reports/india-energy-outlook-2021

This episode is hosted by Siddharth Singh and Simon Bennett. It was produced by Rakesh Kamal (Suno India). Additional production help was provided by Rob Stone and Allison Leacu.