Dr. Varun Gaur

Germany

Deputy General Manager (Business Development & Partnership)

energy&meteo systems GmbH

2018

www.energymeteo.de

Energy system modelling, virtual power plants

Resource Economist

Renewable power systems expert

Masters of Science in Renewable Energy, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Prof. Dr. Joachim von Braun

Dr. Alisher Mirzabaev

5dce_CV_Varun-Dec2016.pdf [PDF | 908.20KB]

• Methods
• New Technologies

Masters of Science in Renewable Energy, University of Oldenburg, Germany

BMZ (German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development)

Decentralized Bioenergy in India and its synergies with Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus

India is an overwhelmingly rural country, with a huge reliance on traditional biomass for its energy consumption. Besides its direct impact on health and environment, usage of traditional biomass has serious consequences on the economic and social development of rural households. Biomass energy supply and consumption also affect the general welfare as it may compete for scarce factors (such as land, labor and water) with agriculture particularly food security. Bioenergy plays an intrinsic role in the Water-Energy-Food security Nexus. Modern bioenergy development is considered as an effective tool for strengthening the security of energy supply, reducing carbon emissions and simultaneously offering opportunities for livelihood generation and the overall development. Modern bioenergy is thus at the center of sustainable economic development and the green growth. This makes bioenergy innovations critical for India, and is the motivation for the proposed research. Firstly, by combining both production and consumption decisions of agricultural households (regarding domestic biomass energy use), the proposed study will analyze the drivers for the energy transition from traditional biomass to modern energy sources of different kinds. Secondly, in the context of alternative energy sources it will model the role that modern decentralized bioenergy technologies can play for the energy security of rural Indian households and analyze its direct impact on the income generation for the agricultural households (through biomass fuel supply chains). Under the Food-Energy-Water Nexus, it will then assess the synergies and the impacts that decentralized modern biomass energy technologies/generation have on the agricultural (food) production and the local livelihoods in rural India. For these objectives, a farm household model will be applied to provide new insights for energy policy of the country. For pursuing these objectives, panel data set will be generated through household surveys in the selected region following up on the previous surveys in the region. With one of the lowest electrification rate in the country, huge dependence on traditional biomass, its significant bioenergy potential and agriculture dominant economy, Uttar Pradesh has been selected as the region of study.

BMZ (German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development)

Prof. Dr. Joachim von Braun

Dr. Alisher Mirzabaev