Speaker: Atanu Mukherjee, SDM alumnus and president of the engineering consulting firm M. N. Dastur & Co. (P) Ltd.
Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2019
About the talk: The need for cheap and sustainable energy will continue to expand as industrial and economic growth accelerates. The challenge is to architect energy systems and feedstocks for a future industrial economy which is sustainable, economically viable, socially integrative and future-proof while leveraging the resource endowments of the nation. While renewables are a good carbon neutral energy complement, a growing industrial economy will need cost-effective and clean primary or base load energy. Similarly, as India is completely dependent on imported crude and crude based feedstocks for its industry and the economy, crude volatility and geo-political disruptions can severely destabilize the nation. The country has limited gas or oil reserves but has the 5th largest coal reserves in the world. By gasifying the vast reserves of Indian high ash coal and by cost effectively capturing the carbon using carbon capture technology, use and sequestration, India can enable an entire gasification value chain based on syn-gas and clean coal technology. The synthesis of such an energy and industrial feedstock system requires systemic architectural considerations on technology options, sustainability, economics, trade, finance, logistics and – importantly – government policy.
About the Speaker:Atanu Mukherjee is the President of M. N. Dastur & Co. (P) Ltd, an engineering consulting firm. He advises the energy, materials and commodity industry globally in the areas of strategy, technology, operations and finance, working with governments, national and international institutions, private equity firms, and investors. He also serves as visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management. Prior to his work in the energy and commodity industry, Atanu was in senior leadership positions at Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is an alumnus of the System Design and Management program and holds a graduate degree from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Bombay.
