Pardeep Garg on heat pumps as the next big engine for India’s net zero effort

In this episode, I’m joined by Pardeep Garg, co-founder and CEO of CRID India — Centre for Research and Implementation for Decarbonization.With a background spanning IISc in Bengaluru, MIT in the US, and multiple climate-tech startups, Pardeep is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technical research and real-world execution.CRID India identifies itself as a think tank and implementation agency, focusing on “hard-to-abate” sectors in industry, and agriculture, where Pardeep points out that even though there exist well-understood technologies that are more energy efficient and therefore emission reducing, their adoption has not taken off, because of the initial costs involved, lack of awareness and so on.In this episode, he discusses examples, such as heat pumps, which he says could be India's next big success story, comparable to solar energy, and details his team's work in building the nation's first industrial heat map.More efficient motors of IE 4 or IE 5 (international energy efficiency) rating are another example, as is drip irrigation.We also discuss CRID India’s aim of becoming a “systems integrator” for energy transition in the country, where solving for climate change requires aligning policy, finance, and stakeholder interests beyond just engineering.