International sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future has appointed India-based Kunal Sharma as global strategic lead, energy, to drive its strategy on the transition to renewable energy.
Sharma will support teams across four geographies – the United Kingdom, United States, India and Southeast Asia. His remit will be to develop emerging areas of work in renewable energy and “deliver programmes that work with partners to influence a rapid global transition to renewable energy that is ecologically safe, socially just, and helps shift the goals of the energy system”, the Forum said in an email.
Sharma has over 20 years’ experience in energy, climate, and environmental issues in the not-for-profit space. He was previously with Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation as climate policy lead, program director at The Nature Conservancy India, and policy director at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in South Asia.
Over the course of his career, Sharma has assisted the state governments of Madhya Pradesh in central India and Sikkim in north-eastern India to develop their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and identify climate mitigation measures, and has informed the Indian environment ministry’s revision of standards for emissions from thermal power plants and brick kilns.
In the non-governmental space, Sharma helped establish GHG Platform India as a collective of civil society organisations providing independent estimates and analysis of India’s GHG emissions. He facilitated the adoption of climate-friendly practices for agriculture residue management in north-west India, and collaborated with numerous civil society institutions on activities that have fed into the global United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Montreal Protocol deliberations.
“The ongoing global energy crisis has made it clearer than ever the need for substantial, deep, and urgent transformations of our current energy system, which in effect denies both current and future generations their right to a liveable environment,” Sharma said. “I look forward to working… towards a socially just and ecologically safe energy system.”
