How Green is your Money? | ft. Akshat Rathi

Guest: Akshat Rathi, Senior Reporter for Climate at Bloomberg News and the host of the climate solutions podcast 'Zero’

Host: Shreya Jai & Sandeep Pai

Producer: Tejas Dayananda Sagar

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to Season 3 of The India Energy Hour podcast! The India Energy Hour podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India's energy transition through an in-depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements and science. The podcast is hosted by energy transition researcher and author Dr. Sandeep Pai and senior energy and climate journalist Shreya Jai. The show is produced by multimedia journalist Tejas Dayananda Sagar and is presented by 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from Rural India.

[end]

[Guest intro]

How many trillions would be required to reach zero? Are global dialogues enough to rake up funds? As countries race to meet their net carbon zero targets, it is the technological solutions and entrepreneurial ventures which could make it a reality. Capitalism has always been the antithesis of climate action. But what happens when you marry them both?

To explore this, we talked with Akshat Rathi, Senior Reporter for Climate at Bloomberg News and host of their climate-solutions podcast Zero. He touches upon various aspects of climate and science reporting, entrepreneurship in the green energy sectors and his experience as a roving climate writer. With his first book Climate Capitalism coming out soon, Akshat also delves into the challenges and opportunities he had in researching and travelling for it.

Akshat with an academic background in Organic Chemistry switched to science journalism. He earlier reported for Quartz in India before moving to the UK to be part of the Bloomberg News team.

[end]

[Podcast interview]

Sandeep: Akshat. Welcome to The India Energy Hour podcast. I personally have followed your work quite extensively. What I really like about your work is that you work at the intersection of science, technology, economics, which is some of the key drivers of climate action or inaction. So really delighted to have you on the podcast and yeah, look forward to this conversation.

Akshat Rathi: Well, thanks so much for having me. yeah, you guys do excellent work. I mean, this is the podcast, to listen to, with all things India. And so I'm really delighted to be here.

How did you get into climate, specifically climate policy and technology

Sandeep : Great. as if you have heard some of our episodes, we start with the people, the person, which is also the theme of your book, which I'm really excited to kind of, dive into. but let's start with where you come from. Where were you born? What's your story? What did you study? I know that you have a PhD in chemistry. Then from chemistry. How did you get into climate, specifically climate policy and technology. Tell us your story.

Akshat Rathi: so I was born in Nasik, in Maharashtra, and I grew up there. I was there till I was finishing, my twelveTH standard. And then I did, engineering undergrad, in the Institute of Chemical Technology, in Mumbai. and I focused on pharmaceutical sciences at the time. my dad ran a little business. He was an engineer himself. And growing up in India, if you're good at math and science, you do engineering or you do medicine. And I did not want to do medicine, so engineering was the choice. Ah, for me. I did choose chemical engineering. I like chemistry a lot. I thought, it'll be fun to at least be able to do more chemistry while I'm doing chemical engineering. Turned out the engineering part was okay. The maths was kind of boring. It wasn't the maths I liked, it was mostly statistics. And so I ended up being fortunate at that institute where there was a lot of emphasis, on research, on, going abroad and studying at good universities. And I applied for a, ah, PhD position and got one in, Oxford and then did a PhD in chemistry. Now up to that point, it's kind of the traditional Indian story. It's like, kid has some smarts, uses some smarts to get a degree, goes abroad, it's only after going to Oxford that sort of my story changes a little bit from that traditional route. and that's because I liked writing. This was something I started doing while I was in undergrad, and while doing my PhD, I realized I kind of don't want to be a professor. It's a lot of, grind before you can become one, you have to spend years. I, ah, did organic chemistry in my PhD and five to ten years was not unheard of spending, as a postdoc before you could become a professor. And the life of a professor also wasn't that appealing. Like, you ended up spending 70% of your time writing grant proposals rather than actually doing the work. and so I thought, well, I have a degree, I have some knowledge, I have an interest in writing. What can I do? and so I applied for an internship at The Economist, and then I became a journalist.

Shreya: that's great. What I wanted to understand was that, after that, you were not a science journalist, or you were not writing research pieces. You became a roving journalist. You were going around, even for your podcast. I believe you travel. We will touch upon that. but why they shift? And then from chemistry, I am unable to draw the connection. Maybe you can. You started writing about climate and energy and the intersection of both. How did that happen? Because I'm very, interested to know that. A lot of journalists will tell you that it's by accident, or I liked writing, but yours is a very different thing. So just please tell me that.

Akshat Rathi: Yeah, it started with, actually, science journalism, because, it was something that in the UK at the time, there was, a general push towards getting more science trained people to do journalism. and this has some history that goes into sort of, disinformation and misinformation campaigns. So, in the UK, there was a very famous case of, a researcher who fabricated data, and connected vaccines, with autism, and he had to retract those papers. And, the way it was reported in the media was a pain, point, because it was not reported properly. And so that made journalism look into itself and figure out that actually, we do need people with special skills. And I was kind of there in that right time where there was interest in having people with science training. and so that's how I started. and I did science journalism. I mean, one of the things about being at Oxford, and the reason I kind of went down the route of journalism, is when you're growing up in India and you're doing these degrees, you're sort of focused and very hyper focused, in a way, towards one subject. Going to Oxford was a way of really exploring things. I hadn't considered philosophy, art, culture, debating with people in a way where it's not about winning, it's about really trying to understand where your knowledge lacks and how you can develop. and so the world of ideas was really interesting to me. Being able to interact with people from different backgrounds was very, energizing. And I thought, well, if journalism can allow me to do that, then that would be great. and so, yeah, I started on doing science journalism, and then, I always had a bent for business. I come from a family of businessmen. and so business publication Doing Science allowed, me to sort of explore these themes, that Sandeep mentioned about science, technology, business, economics. and the climate transition came around because of Donald Trump. which is weird, but interesting. I was working for an American publication called Quartz at the time, writing science stories of all kinds. and my editor was like, well, this guy's talking about clean coal. What is it? And I was like, well, that's a marketing phrase. And it's Trump. He doesn't really know. But there is a thing behind it, and it's controversial, and it's a thing that's been going on for 50 years. And he's like, what? That's a lot. Can you do something about it? And so I ended up doing a series on carbon capture, the technology behind it, and that's how I got into doing climate journalism. And I've kind of stayed on that beat since then.

Shreya: I'm not sure how many journalists will credit Donald Trump for kickstarting their next career, and that to his climate, of all the sectors.

Akshat Rathi: And it's been going, well so far, so I really should meet him at some point and thank him.

Sandeep : Well, I feel like a lot of people have been inspired, by him. I mean, my own PhD was partly inspired by the whole Cole jobs and the narrative around all that, so I can sense and at that point, it was really hard to justify why we were doing this kind of topic, but then it was this political narrative that really helped convince my committee and advisor. So that makes us too.

Would you still do it in chemistry, or would you choose a different topic

Sandeep : but, on a more kind of serious topic, if you were to go back, if you were to go back and reflect, and if you were to choose subjects, or if you were to redo your PhD, I wouldn't advise anyone to do a second PhD. But if you were to go back, and would you still do it in chemistry, or would you choose a different topic, given your trajectory, where you are and what you're reporting?

Akshat Rathi: Probably not. I mean, chemistry, I still love the subject, but from a PhD perspective, it's kind of saturated. the place you end up going to if you're a PhD in organic chemistry is in academia or in the pharmaceutical industry. the two things that at the time when I was doing my PhD, and if we're rolling the clocks back, that really were interesting to me, and have kind of proven out to be, hot topics. One is machine learning and artificial intelligence. the other one is neuroscience. and I had both friends then doing that. I, had friends then studying those subjects, and they're in interesting places, doing interesting things. and so, yeah, I would choose a different PhD subject, but I also kind of don't mind having had what I, could do, which is combine all the weird subjects that I learned into, applying them for a real life problem, which is climate change. And one, of the things I think that is missing from the climate sphere less and less so is actually being able to connect the dots between different subjects. and I've been able to do that and continue to do that and so that's been.

Know, you have reported from India and now you're in UK

Shreya: Know, you have reported from India as well and now you're in UK. first I'd like to ask your experience, first, reporting from India and now there and second, you know, given that you have a much more broad based idea, given your science background, know, engineering background, what do you think seems to be missing from the climate stories that people tell? There was this climate class that I was attending and the title of it was The Stories that We Miss. And people kept on talking about that. There are so many stories and there are obvious things that we do not focus on, say, island nations or less developed countries and things like that. But when it comes to reporting, reporting, what is the point that you would like to say that climate journalists in general are missing?

Akshat Rathi: Big question. I would be surprised if I get it right. now maybe it's easier to start with sort of reporting in different countries. I started being a journalist in the UK, so I never had any formal journalism training. I just went to The Economist as an intern and learnt it on the job, so to speak. and reporting in India was an experience because I had never done it before and you really require a lot of skill, guts, entrepreneurialism, persistence, and so many other skills. So shreya hats off to you, how you can do it day in and day out in India. I only did it as somebody sitting in London talking to people in India or when I'm on the ground doing it on specific stories. and so you go in with a plan and try and execute it as best as you can. so my journalism experience in India is a fraction of what yours is, so I don't think there's a, ah, comparison to be made. the biggest India story I've done is report on coal, ah, in India. I went to Chhattisgarh, and traveled around the state, went to Korba and tried to understand the sort of coal economy as best as I could. but really it is hard to be able to tell the India story, as big broad without actually being based there. So it's been a pleasure to be able to do what I do while working with colleagues in India. So both at courts when I was, writing about climate issues. But, now at Bloomberg, it's really working with my India colleagues that I'm able to tell those stories well, because there is no, substitute for on the ground reporting for knowledge that is, acquired by journalists who are there day in and day out.

How did you learn podcasting skills and what attracted you to it

Sandeep : Great. let's switch a topic a little bit. I want to understand your podcasting journey. It's one thing to be a writer, it's one thing to be a science writer, which you had interest and training. the former was interest and the second was training, but, it's another thing to get into podcasting space, because at some level it's a new space, but at another level it's also an established space. so how did you learn podcasting skills? Like, were you nervous when you first got in this space? I have a follow up as well, but let's start from there.

Akshat Rathi: Yeah, it's a very good question, and to me, podcasting is still very new. It's only been a year actually, that I've been doing it. and I would say the thing that attracted me to it was I listened to a lot of podcasts and I enjoyed listening to them. And the thing that I really liked that I thought I could do is do good interviews. because it's a skill. It's, being able to, eke out something interesting from somebody who is a CEO of a company and rarely says anything interesting, or to, talk to controversial academics or controversial thinkers around topics and being able to challenge them on their thoughts when you are not the subject expert. But those thoughts do need to be. you know, I've been fortunate to be able to go and interview world leaders. I had a chance to sit down with Justin Trudeau, and that went well. so it's been a journey and I've, enjoyed it thoroughly, but it's been a very steep learning curve. mostly I have learned from listening to other people, do their job, but also I have two producers on my team who are sort of been in this industry for longer than I have and they've really helped me do, my job as best as I could. in terms of being able to do it in Climate, I feel like you're hitting it right, which is podcasting had been established by the time I launched my podcast, but Climate podcasts were still pretty new. Most, of the Climate podcasts I listened to, were not quite hitting the mark for me. it ended up being friends talking to friends, or ended up being Americans talking to Americans. There was very little global appreciation for the topic that is climate change. and I thought that might be a niche I could try and fill.

Sandeep : Great. so I'm a regular listener of your Zero podcast. I wouldn't say I haven't listened to all episodes, but I have listened to quite a few. I really like the recent one with Martin I forget his name. Like the solar Martin Green. Yeah, that was very well done. I also like that you focus on an individual and tell the bigger story. but I do have one kind of feedback and a question feedback. and then that leads to a larger question. although I find that you cover the technology economics, business aspects quite well, do you think you would be covering more of the social side of the transition? Because there'll be a lot of interaction with communities as you deploy things, and there's so many aspects of that. But that also speaks to my larger question, which is, like, do you think we can achieve 1.5 by just focusing on techno economics? do we not need to focus whether it's in the form of finance, whether it's in the form of other aspects on the socioeconomic cultural, more social science type of topics, if I may?

Akshat Rathi: Yeah, 100%. There is, no doubt. I think my own journey into the climate sphere has been one coming from the science side. And so at no point have I said that's the only way, this gets solved. it's been my way of being able to cover the subject. and in a way, I have treated journalism less as I am the dumb guy. Teach ah me everything, and I will write whatever you teach me. that's one way of doing journalism. And it's very useful. it's a perspective where, you go in without knowing anything, and you learn and you write. I have tried to mix my level of knowledge with the journalism, so it's been a little more focused. if I'm going to write about batteries, I am going to damn well understand them. And the nice thing about being a journalist is people do talk to you like you can talk to the best battery scientist and they'll give you time. And so, why not make use of that level of privilege to understand stuff so that you can explain it better for an audience? and so, in a way, the book is a very good journey for me. when I pitched it initially in 2019, it was focused very much on the science and tech because that's where my strengths were at the time. but as I started reporting it, and as my own, ability to be able to connect the dots between different subjects grew, that book has become a much bigger, broader subject book. So technology is still core to it, because, again, that's where I come from. and again, from a techno economic perspective, technology is a big, huge lever that we do need to pull. We are pulling, but can pull a lot more. except it never will deliver on all the things we need it to if all the other things don't work. So you need policies ah, to work. You need the people to be there. You need the social, ah, license to be able to deploy all those technologies and have those transitions. So no way is, that a, limitation. if anything, that sort of makes the challenge of doing climate journalism that much more interesting.

Shreya: I like the part where you talk about the approach toward journalism that is something to take a print out and give to rookie journalists. So great quote.

Ashit: How much acceptance would a platform like podcast have

Shreya: I want to ask something from a podcaster to podcaster. And this is, I think we have discussed, offline as well, how much acceptance would a platform like podcast have? These are the issues that we are discussing here, the issues that you discuss in your podcast, these are issues that should reach a layman. But podcast as a platform is not reaching. And we have studied the Indian market, so we know that we are just not even the tip. We are just a micron of the iceberg is what we touch upon with this platform. What has been your feedback, what has been your experience using podcasts as a tool to disseminate knowledge and stories? And do you think that this platform will grow, will have a wider audience going forward in the future?

Akshat Rathi: That's a good question. I feel like I grew up in an era as a journalist where thinking about journalism just on one platform, whether that's just writing or, ah, just audio or just video, or just TV or just radio. even more specifically was not a thing. Like if you were a journalist growing up in 2010s, you just had to learn to do all those things simultaneously. so I remember going into India, I took a camera with me, I took a recorder with me, and I took my notebook and pen with me. And I was both reporter, producer, on video, audio, everything. And then if the video was crap, then we never produced it, but at least I tried. and so it is kind of important if you want to reach a big, broad audience. They are on different platforms and trying to get them where they are is, ah, good. But podcasting is weird. When I look at audience, and the size of the population that we have in India, relative to the number of people who listen to my podcast, India ranks like 8th on my list. And I'm always surprised, I'm like, well, these topics that I'm talking about are so important. Like, surely even if it's not an India focused one, you would want to know what's happening in the solar industry, how it's born. You want the solar industry to come to India, right? But it's one of those behavioral things which, podcasting is big in the US. And in the UK and Australia, in the US. Especially, where people drive a lot, so you have time to listen to stuff, like this, in India, video is huge. and so my editors tell me that India's video consumption is just way higher than podcast consumption. so, yeah, maybe we have to get into video podcasts now. If we really need to reach the audience, we want to.

Sandeep : Ashit.

You prepared for the Justin Trudeau interview by relying on other experts

Sandeep : I have a little bit of, a process question, and I ask this because we have so many students listening to our podcast. People who go and even do academic studies, do interviews, surveys, et cetera. So maybe they'll benefit from your process. So my question to you is, when you prepare for an episode, and say that you have lots of time. Sometimes we don't have time. So we are reading on the flight or doing it very quickly, and I speed read your book between last night. So that happens sometimes. But if you had the opportunity and time, how would you go about preparing? Say you have to travel to US or India to study a topic. Who would you read? Tell me about the process. I think it'll be very beneficial.

Akshat Rathi: I'll walk you through the preparation for the Justin Trudeau interview, which might be the most informative of these, preps that I've done. I didn't know until Thursday, the week before, which is Tuesday was the interview. I didn't know until Thursday that the interview was going to happen. And, in that five day period, I had to get myself from London to Ottawa, and prepare for the interview. and the best way I can do interview preparations is to rely on the expertise of others. and so I spent a bunch of time just talking to other people. I talked to my colleagues in Canada and at Bloomberg News who covered this topic day in and day out. I spoke to, people in NGOs, in think tanks, to academics. and slowly, you kind of piece together the big topics that are on people's mind, because you're going to get half an hour with a world leader where, yes, you can focus on climate change, but Canada is a big economy, has so much happening at one time. how do you touch on the topics that are important, but also then eke out answers that a polished statesman will, be very hard to eke out from? so at the end of it, all, those conversations became pages and pages of notes on Google Docs. I worked with my producers to do this. one of the producers was also full time, working on doing that research. Then we started formulating our questions. Once we started formulating the questions, we realized, okay, this is how the conversational flow would be. Even if it's a 30 minutes on stage interview, it still has to be a conversation. Because without being able to make the conversation, ah, work, you're not going to be able to engage the audience because it's a live event as well as a podcast. and so eventually, we were down to three pages of questions and then we had to come down to one sheet. And that was the sort of last 12 hours where we went through questions thinking about what kind of answer we are going to get, what could be the follow up that we could ask. he's going to use some of his old tricks. How can we pierce through those tricks? and it was probably the most intense, but also the most fun way of being able to do interview preps. the other one is where I'm familiar with the subject and I go in with my own interests. So one I can talk about, which is, I'm going to interview Colin Mcrasher next week. He is the, transport, chief of Bloomberg NEF and one of the smartest thinkers, in the space of electrification, of transport. It's a space I've been following for years now. but he is the expert. But I have a lot of knowledge, in the space as well. So I'm going to have an interview with him before the actual podcast interview where we are just going to talk through. Okay, so here's how I see the world and how I understand it. And clearly I have a limited perspective of it because you are the expert. So now fill the gaps for me. Tell me, where am I wrong? Where, the public perception? As also journalists, we have to be keeping an eye out on because we are not just talking to the experts, we are thinking about what the public really knows. and so how can I be the funnel to try and get your expertise out in the most simplest way, in the most interesting way for an audience? and so those are both sort of like very different types of preparation depending on the topic and the person at the end of it.

Shreya: That's great. Thanks for the tips.

Your new book is called Climate Capitalism and addresses capitalism and climate change

Shreya: I wanted to talk about the latest feather in your cap. Ah, you were a journalist, then you became a podcaster, and then now you're coming out with your first book, which is very amazing. Congratulations. first of all, and I hope the book does great, I've obviously read through it. But I first talk about the very interesting title that you have chosen for the book, which is called Climate Capitalism. these two words were never together for years that we are listening about, the climate debates. We see climate activists and people who talk about climate in these many years. It's now that these two have come together and your book addresses that I'm sure you also will. why did this idea come to you that capitalism and climate can be put together and talked about it? Was it an incident? Was it a story that led to it? just let's start with the title of the book.

Akshat Rathi: So the title of the book is really the credit goes to the publisher because the title I had was Lame, and it was The Existential Economy. and the goal of the book when I wrote the, Ah pitch for it was, I'm going to tell you about the solutions that we do have that we are starting to scale, but we really need to scale everywhere all at once, to build a kind of world that will allow us to not just exist, but thrive. that was the case and that's why it was called The Existential Economy. And then my publisher was like, well, all through this you are talking about doing it in the current economic system, which clearly many activists think and most of the debate says is not going to be the way to solve this. And I'm like, actually it is starting to work. There are examples all around the world where within the capitalistic economy you do have climate solutions being formed. But clearly capitalism has been a cause, an accelerant to, the climate crisis. So how do you get those solutions in, overcoming the limitations and the problems that capitalism has thrown at you? And so, she made me think about whether my priors going in, are, ah, on a strong footing and if they are, why don't you make the case more strongly? and so it was a nice push and pull, which is the lovely thing about being able to do, journalism where you have editors and you have other people, checking on your thoughts, pushing back on your ideas, before you can present them to a wider audience. and so that was a good challenge and I was, happy to, go down that route. And I hope I've delivered, a book that sort of makes the case that there are ways in which you can make it work, even if those challenges are, ah, not small.

Shreya: Great, thank God for your publisher, else we would have had a very kafkask book in our hands.

You have gone to each of these countries, you visited them

Shreya: I'll go to the other titles as well, which are there. They're very interesting chapters.

You have gone to each of these countries, you visited them, understood their whole clean energy, climate economy. And I'll read out some of the chapter names that you have. You have called India the doer. We will get into that very separately. It deserves a lot of time. Then there is the bureaucrat, the winner, the reformer, the wrangler, the billionaire campaigner and the capitalist.

How did you choose these countries for your climate change book

Shreya: But I want to first understand the process, how did you choose these countries? Like China, obviously is a very easy option to choose from. It's where the whole solar manufacturing is. India, obviously is an upcoming sector. How did you choose these countries? How did you choose your people that you wanted. To understand of in the India chapter, you have talked about someone, a farmer who is a direct beneficiary or directly impacted by a solar power plant. We've talked about entrepreneurs in China. You have talked about the people who are into the manufacturing zones and in US, you have talked about a completely separate economy, basically, which is running these two economies that we're talking about. How did you choose know? We talked about the process of your podcasting. Give us some tips on writing book also.

Akshat Rathi: Yeah, it's a messy process, which, again, as a journalist, as a researcher, you will very well recognize that, what ends up being shared with a wider audience is years of cutting room floor, throwing stuff out that doesn't work. M picking ideas that are not delivering the story, picking people that are not interesting characters. And then finally what you are left with is what you put in the book. so that's sort of the long answer. the more systematic one, which also existed because it is such a big topic and it is so global that it would have become impossible to try and tell a story that would be, fully representative of what the world is and where we are. but I wanted to be as close a representation as I could given the time limit. I had the number of pages, I had the number of words I could put down. And so I started with just the rough solution, set what do we need to tackle climate change? That's, where the journey sort of started with the tech. obviously, I need to figure out solar and tell a story about solar. Same with wind batteries, electric cars. these are solutions that are working at scale in different countries. So then within those, which are the more interesting ones and how do you tell the story around them? so wind, I will take as an example. There are a few countries that have done wind well, and you could pick any one of them and tell a story. I picked Denmark because Osted, the company, existed there. I'd been to Denmark a few times. I also saw that its story, had not been told in quite that same way. If I'd picked the UK, its story would have been told, because the UK's wind sector has evolved over a while. Its journalism is English language, reaches a big audience and so that story has kind of been told. So you do both sort of like a, top down, here's what I want to tell, but then also sort of the journalistic opportunistic, option, which is what is it that hasn't been told and how can I tell it? Well, once that's done, then you try and figure out, okay, so who will be the people that will tell the story? And again, there you have tons and tons of choices. but also not all of those choices will be accessible to you. So you are sort of playing with what is possible versus what would you like? and I was fortunate that I got to tell the story through, the former CEO of Danish Oil and Natural Gas, which is now Orsted. And so he kind of was at the moment of the transition between a fossil fuel company becoming a wind company, but he wasn't the CEO that was sitting in the throne. And so having a former CEO tell the story was a much more frank, conversation I could have about that company, without having to, cut through the corporate, talk, that will come from somebody sitting in power. so, yeah, I would say, ah, it's a messy process. There is a method to the madness, but eventually it's sort of, what is it that I can deliver in the limits that I have. And of course, I ended up with a book that still lacks a lot of things. I could have picked chapters on so many other things, and at some point I had to be like, okay, this is the deadline to deliver the book.

Sandeep : When I read your book, I could see the synergy between your writings, your podcast, and the book. Because in some ways, like, your podcast also follows the same kind of trajectory you follow a person or organization, and then you kind of narrate the largest story. So it's really well written, first of all. So congratulations. It's quite accessible, across topics. And I think the book is coming out in October, so I encourage everybody who is listening to definitely pre book your orders on Kindle and others.

There's so much optimism coming out from this book about climate change

Sandeep : having said that, I have a few kind of questions around. Like, when I read the book, my biggest reflection is, oh, we'll solve this climate issue. There's so much optimism coming out from this book. Right? But is this the reality? I'm just being a devil's advocate, of course. is this the reality? Because there's a lot of things that are working, but there's a lot of things that needs to work, especially if the target is 1.5 or two. if you're talking about three, then that's different. But if you were to add a couple of chapters, which is about dumism, what would you add? What would be the nature of topics that you feel discouraged about? I know that I put you on.

Akshat Rathi: The spot, but no, this is something I thought about all through. I mean, the beauty of writing a book is that you are having a fight with yourself a lot because it's, lonely enterprise in a way, if you're writing a book on your own. yes, you have an editor who'll sort of push back, et cetera, but most of the time it's you and the screen in front of you and your words reflected back at you. And so you have to think about the choices you make. And it's been, fruitful, to be able to reflect on that. So I'll say the best answer I can give, which may seem like, chickening out, but I don't think it is, is that there isn't one narrative strand that defines where we are in the climate journey. Every country, every company, every person who learns about this crisis will come and will find the solutions that are best for them in very different ways at very different times. so the book and the stories that I have in there are sort of picked up timelines. and I've tried to give the context. So my goal with the book wasn't to say, we can solve this. You don't have to worry about it. They've got it. Go to sleep. That wasn't the job. The job was, here are ways in which people are doing it in different countries. Here are the real challenges they face as they have tried to scale these solutions, and they are only so far in that journey, which means there's a lot more to be done.

Sandeep Gupta: Climate change as a story is overwhelming

Akshat Rathi: And that lot more, to be done is climate change as a story is overwhelming, right? So much can happen to us, but also what we need to solve can be overwhelming. So how do you think about a framework for what the solution set is? Where do you need to go? And how you, as an individual can participate, in that journey, or even understand it so that we are not fighting over ideological battles, but we are trying to, take this forward. That's what the hope with the book was. Not, to say that, no, this is all done. We don't need to worry about it.

Shreya: I don't know if you intended that with the book, but given that it comes at such a time where G 20 has just got over, the General Assembly at UN is happening, and ASEAN breaks, everything has happened. And one theme that has emerged, is that there is no one single approach that a group of countries, even if there is a common goal, these group of countries are not able to come together to work towards that common goal. You also mentioned that you have chosen timelines. You have talked about what each country is doing, which is great in a way, if you look at the targets, if you look at what all is happening in some of the countries which are actually doing something, it is great, but would we reach a common goal? I'm, not so I don't know if you intended to reflect that in your book, but it looks like that. What are your thoughts on this?

Akshat Rathi: So I'm not sure I understood what the question is.

Shreya: you've covered all these countries. each of them is working towards their own energy transition goal. But there is no common goal that is emerging among these countries. These economies tend to work, are supposed to work with each other, together, but each is doing its own. So the climate goal that Sandeep mentioned about it's, actually very well known. Are we working together towards that? Are these countries?

Akshat Rathi: Yes. So this is going back to the point that Sandeep was making, which is, are ah, we on track, can we reach this goal? And what are the things that are missing, for us to be able to reach this goal? What are sort of the sad, stories, the doom stories that will stop us from getting there? And there are many. I mean, you can pick again, pretty much every country has their own doom story that you can pick up. I'll pick one from the UK. this is the week when the Prime Minister of the UK, which was, the country, is the country that has cut the most emissions among G seven, nations, has come out and said, well, we are going too fast, we've done too much, and now it's time to slow down, because, that's what our country right now needs. Doesn't, matter if the world is falling behind on climate goals. That last half, he didn't say, but you can interpret it. and so there's the doomist narrative, which is the party in power, which has the leadership at least for another year. is not interested as much in trying to reach its climate. know, if you had to pick up a, ah, doomish narrative in India, that would be, well, India has poverty that is rising back again because of what's happened through COVID. India doesn't have many of the resources that are going to be needed if it really does want to build its transition solution, set. It doesn't, really have a solar manufacturing sector, it doesn't really have a battery manufacturing sector. And so pretty much any place you go and look, there will be problems and lots and lots of problems. and then there's the wild cards, which really, we don't know how things will pan out, which is global cooperation. We are kind of in that world where there's more fracturing happening, compared to, the globalist the globalization period that we, lived through as we were growing up as kids, in India, benefiting, from that. Opening up of the economy and, having our, incomes level go up, at a pace that had not happened in the, know, we are not in that place anymore. there's a war that's raging. we don't know what climate impacts will do when mass migration happens. We know that migration already is causing political problems in Europe, in America, in India. and so what will happen when that migration is supercharged, when it's five times and ten times. those are sort of wild cards that we don't have answers to. But it's very easy to think about the problems and then be overwhelmed, and then feel like nothing's happening. Then you get the book The Uninhabitable Earth, where you get the timelines of what could go wrong. And again, that's a really good academic exercise to have. It's a good book to have on the shelf to know what could go wrong. but I'm hoping that we can also look at the solutions and then go, okay, well, yes, there are all these problems, but there is a way out, because clearly there are people who have succeeded. And how can we learn from what those successes, teach us?

Sandeep : Great.

One of your chapters focuses on India; another focuses on climate change

Sandeep : let's focus on India, because one of your chapter also focuses on India. I have a simple question. Why is the chapter called The Doer?

Akshat Rathi: yes, so the Doer is somebody doing something? And I felt like in India, one of the things that I faced as a person, who grew up there, who goes back every year because family is still there, is the sort of conversation that comes up whenever you talk about a solution, all the problems. And I'm talking about not just climate change, like, literally walking down the street. Where is the pavement? Why do people not drive properly? Why are there potholes? Why is there no, street light? where is the government? Why don't they come and help me? Literally, everything has a problem attached to it. and that's the state that we are in, and that's how we have been. And I wanted to try and show that actually, even despite all those problems, there are people doing stuff. and so that's why it became the Doer. that is not to say the other chapters don't have Doers in them. You sort of make, the choices, about chapter names after the book is written, which is what I've done. and so my working chapter titles were pretty boring. They were just sort of descriptive of what India Solar that is what the chapter was. And then you look back and you're like, okay, so what shines from this chapter? And to me, the thing that shown was being able to do something despite a weight of opposition, a weight of barriers in front of you.

Shreya: Right? sorry, I poked you a little more. please.

Is it this startup bubble in the India's green energy sector

Shreya: and I'll use the word bubble. A lot of people will be offended. But is it this startup bubble in the India's green energy sector? Is the reason that you chose to name the chapter Doer? You have interviewed entrepreneurs, for your different, chapters of different countries, for India as well. it is a great journey. If you look at this sector from where it was, like, ten or twelve years back from where it is now, the amount of money that is flowing in the number of startups companies that have come in. Even conglomerates are betting big on green energy. They are betting big on green hydrogen. The technology for riches is still not proven. But any which ways does it, from a very cynical eye of a journalist look like a bubble? Or that there is more than what meets the eye? What do you think?

Akshat Rathi: Again, I will give you an answer that I feel like you might think I'm chickening out, but actually it is the answer, which is we all live in bubbles, right? there is only so much that we, as normal, human, can absorb at any one time. and our perception of reality is based on that finite amount of information we can hold at any one point. And so we all live in bubbles, right? Like the people we talk to, the class of society we live in, the country we live in, the amount of money we have, all of that creates this layer of this layer of I mean, this sort of layer of information. Fog I would say our job as a journalist is to try as much as we can to break out of that bubble and to try and see, if we can correct the perception of reality, the best we can. And so yeah, certainly, I mean There is a bubble in startup world in general, in different countries, like in the US for example, clean tech is so well funded, that if you compare the kind of funding the US has relative to even Europe, which is a rich, ah, continent itself, the difference is massive. And yet American entrepreneurs will complain how little money we have and how little skill set we have, and how few people we can get to do the jobs that we want. And so even within their own sort of privileged bubble, people will complain about things. and so to me, trying to write the India chapter was to try and see within that bubble. How do you overcome some of the limitations? Of course, the chapter, speaks to the story of Renew, which was very well funded because it got money from Goldman Sachs and then the Canadian pension fund, which is not the kind of access that other startups, were able to get. And so they were able to make that case. But how and why? And why did Sumant Sinha, who sort of spend so much time in the west, in the financial industry in the west, was able to then come back to India and make use of some of those connections? it's a unique story. It's not something that you can always replicate, but you can learn from it. I would hope that, there would be entrepreneurs in Nigeria or in South Africa, that have sort of an economy similar, closer to what India has, has sort of the challenges that are a little bit similar, closer to what India has, and then turn around and be like, okay, so can we build something like this in our country? That's my hope. I mean, it's not that you can build another renew in India, today, but in the moment, in time, what were the things that allowed a renew to happen? Can you try and make that work for the moment and time in the place you are?

You look at any technology across the energy transition space from nuclear to carbon capture

Sandeep : Akshat  I have one kind of big picture question, and then a, light one. the one big picture question is that if you look at any technology across the energy transition space from nuclear to carbon capture and storage, it really evokes emotions, right? Some people are like, oh, this is bullshit, this is just going to work. Pronuclear anti nuclear, where do you stand as somebody who is not just a stenographer, who is just like, okay, this guy is saying anti nuclear, this guy's saying pronuclear, let me just write about it. Or this guy's saying, these activists are saying carbon capture and storage makes no sense, but IPCC models are saying you have to deploy so much to even be close to what? So what do you think needs to happen? Where do you stand personally through your learnings and journey? So that's my kind of big picture. But then I'll ask a final concluding light question.

Akshat Rathi: As a journalist, I start from the place, that nobody I speak to is right, even if that's a climate scientist that leads the IPCC. And if anything, I think the chief of IPCC would be very happy if I start with that stance. I think academics are very willing to be wrong, which is a beauty of academia. but nobody is right, and that's fine. Sorry. There you go. It turns off after an hour anyway. so I start with the premise that nobody is right. And, the stronger somebody has opinions about something, the stronger the chance that they are not right. and so, yes, I don't try and be a stenographer. My way of understanding this is to look at, the differing opinions coming in and trying to make sense of it in the place and time that they are. So, the carbon capture chapter is a very good example of that, which is, okay, so the IPCC says it is needed. It's a technology that's been around for 50 years. What exactly have we tried to do to build it? And the country that has done the most is the US. That's the carbon capture chapter. And then I just go through a series of failures, because that's what you get when you're trying to do carbon capture. It is a series of failures with some working and then not working. and so, it's the same thing with nuclear. I considered whether a nuclear chapter would be worth, writing. And if I had to write a solution chapter, that would have been nuclear in China, and I would not get access to be able to tell that story. So I could tell the China battery and electric car story. And, I was fortunate to be able to do that before COVID happened, so I could go to the country and travel and report on it. But nuclear is just off bounds because of national security issues, et cetera. so the nuclear chapter doesn't exist in my book, but also doesn't kind of exist in the world, because the only country that is actually doing nuclear at scale right now is China. and its experiments haven't really been, ah, exported to other countries, whereas the solar experiment in China has been exported to other countries. And so, to some extent, it's sort of like, okay, I'm going to write a book about solutions that are working at scale, and that allowed me to drop some things off. So I didn't have a chapter in hydrogen, because, again, not working at scale lab, grown meat, not working at scale, offsets, not a solution. That's why they don't exist as chapters in my book, even though I have a ton of reporting on that, that I could have turned it into a chapter and put it in the book, but it just didn't fit, the framework that I was trying to build for where we are, how we got here. Where do we go?

Sandeep : Great.

Akshat Rathi: Fantastic.

David Frum: Thanks again for talking with us on this podcast

Sandeep : my last question is, so now you've become a journalist, a podcaster, an author. What's next? What are you going to do next?

Akshat Rathi: Well, my goal with all this, and this is genuinely why I do what I do, and I hope that anybody listening will take that to heart, is I like to be in the world of ideas. I like to be challenged by the world of ideas. I like to be, wrong if my priors are wrong. And I would hope that people who read these stories, or listen to my podcast, engage with, the scholarship, engage with the conversation, and come back with meaningful things where I, can learn and I can improve. Doing what I am doing, because there's just so much that we all can learn from, and there's just so much that needs to be done to be able to tackle the climate problem. that if my book gives you, a leg up to understand something that you didn't know, or, I've got something wrong because you know that better, please come to me. I would like to learn from you, and I'd like to do better. And maybe there's another book to be written, and maybe there's a different platform to go onto, but, as long as, at the core of it, I'm able to explore ideas, in an, intellectually honest way. I will continue to do that.

Shreya: That's great. lovely message. Thank you so much. Thanks again for talking with, ah, us, for being on this podcast. It was a great conversation. You touched upon a lot of issues, like very broadly. So thanks a lot. Thank you again.

Akshat Rathi: No, thank you. Those were great questions. And, I hope that you, guys, ah, continue to do the work you're doing, because it is so important that we, have these gconversations, because the topics and, the route out is complicated and it's messy. And I think people talking openly, honestly, and, challenging each other is a really good idea.

Sandeep : Thank you. From my side also, I feel like, I learned a lot, number one. And number two, it also gave me a flavor of you as a person, your personality and how you think and react. so thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to being in touch and read more from your work. Read listen.

Akshat Rathi: Thank you. Bye.

[end]

[Podcast outro]

Thank you for listening to The India Energy Hour! Subscribe to this channel to never miss an update. To drop us a feedback, visit our website or write to us at theindiaenergyhour@gmail.com

We are on Twitter. You can follow @tieh_podcast and get in touch with 2 hosts @shreya_jai and @sandeeppaii

[end]