Ayana – building a skills base for India’s clean energy transition
Download
One of the defining features of the just transition is its potential to maximise the social opportunities of climate action, including by creating employment. In India, Ayana Renewable Power is combining the social need for decent work with business self-interest by developing skills development programmes for local people so they can participate in the growing clean energy economy – which in the country as a whole is set to generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Summary
- Ayana Renewable Power was established by British International Investment (BII) as a platform to generate commercial returns and social impact by expanding clean energy. It is now majority-owned by India’s National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) Limited, which has helped scale the platform from 0.5 GW to more than 4 GW of capacity.
- Ayana is applying best-in-class environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices to its rollout of clean energy projects across India, and its Community Development Framework sets out how it engages with stakeholders to support the just transition.
- Ayana has worked with its investors to develop a just transition programme that focuses on community engagement and skills development. Initially, these efforts were grant assisted, but they have become mainstreamed and are supported by Ayana’s core resources.
- Ayana demonstrates how development finance institutions such as BII and institutional investors such as NIIF can help to make the just transition a core part of clean energy expansion, applying just transition principles at the company level within specific policy contexts.
- For clean energy developers, the case also shows how developing skilled employment (including for women) can overcome labour constraints on expansion.
