The fifth edition of CEEW Energy Access Dialogues will focus on deliberating on the challenges of billing and revenue collection that have plagued the discoms for years. These issues have aggravated during the COVID-19 lockdown as discoms across the country had to terminate their meter-reading, physical delivery of bills, and offline payment collection. Addressing these challenges is fundamental to the financial health of discoms and the pursuit of a clean energy future.

During the session, we will discuss preliminary findings from a recent telephonic survey with ~300 urban and rural consumers in the Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Ltd. (MVVNL) distribution region in Uttar Pradesh. The survey sheds light on billing practices and payment modes, besides highlighting the gaps in billing and collection before and during the lockdown. The discussion with discom officials will focus on identifying best practices to overcome the current challenges and improve billing and collection efficiency on a sustained basis.

Energy Access Dialogues is a quarterly forum where researchers and practitioners discuss their ongoing work in energy access, deliberate on its implications, explore possibilities for collaborative work, and review immediate priorities in the energy access space.

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The worldwide economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is having a widespread and often dramatic effect on investments in the energy sector. The energy industry that emerges from this crisis will be significantly different from the one before. The vulnerabilities and implications vary among companies depending on whether they are investing in fossil fuels or low-carbon technologies, as well as across different countries. Where the balance lands will also be a function of investor and financier interest in new renewable energy in this new reality. In this respect, the cost and availability of capital are two key considerations.

The webinar will highlight crucial insights for the government, investors and other stakeholders on new risks to energy security and sustainability, and what can be done to mitigate them. The discussion will include a brief presentation of the key trends in energy investments globally – including India and other emerging economies – as well as insights by the lead authors of the report.

The pandemic has disproportionately, and more detrimentally, affected members of most vulnerable social groups—including people living in poverty, elderly, persons with disabilities, youth, women, queer, transgender, and indigenous peoples. A report by the United Nations on the impacts of COVID-19 on women notes that the compounded economic impacts are felt especially by women and girls who are generally earning less, saving less, and holding insecure jobs or living close to poverty. Similarly, the plight of migrant workers in India has also come to the forefront during this outbreak.

The COVID-19 response and recovery process provides us with a chance to work on existing inequities to ensure that everyone in the society receives fair opportunities as we prepare to enter a post-pandemic society of hope. If not properly addressed at this stage, it may increase inequality, exclusion, discrimination, and global unemployment in the medium and long term, making us vulnerable as a society for future threats. Businesses and organisations have the opportunity to become agents of change by working actively on inclusion along caste, class, and gender lines.

Through this webinar, we would like to start a discussion around how the recovery plans of businesses could address inequities more strongly than earlier, in their own operations as well as in their value chain. We learn from examples of how it has been done in the past and how it can be scaled for all employers to become agents of change.

The webinar marks the launch of IISD and CEEW’s latest update of energy subsidy data from FY 2017 to FY 2019. Transparency about energy subsidies is important so people can understand what support measures exist, how much they cost and how they perform with respect to stated policy objectives.

We want to acknowledge that we are organising this webinar in extraordinary circumstances, given the terrible impacts of COVID-19 on health and livelihoods in India. There are uncertain times ahead and the first priority has to be health and helping people meet their essential needs. At the same time, we cannot lose sight of ambition for a clean energy transition. We look forward to discussing what the current situation will mean for government interventions in the energy sector—and how experiences from the past two years can help inform the future.