The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC India) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with REC Limited, a public infrastructure finance company and REC Power Development and Consultancy Limited (RECPDCL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of REC Ltd to enable an evidence-based approach to improve the electricity distribution utility performance by designing innovative policy interventions for pilot and evaluation.
The MoU was signed in the presence of R. Lakshmanan, Chief Executive Officer – RECPDCL, Dr. Anant Sudarshan, South Asia Director – EPIC and Sidhartha Vermani, Executive Director – EPIC India. Under this partnership, in addition to providing research and evaluation support, EPIC India will collaborate with REC Ltd and RECPDCL to provide a platform for knowledge sharing on international research and policy innovations through its nexus of leading international experts.
Talking about the partnership, R. Lakshmanan, Chief Executive Officer – RECPDCL, said, “This partnership provides us with a framework for future collaborative projects that can help improve performance of discoms while bringing down financial losses. We aim to leverage EPIC India’s data management and analysis expertise to improve the planning and execution of existing and new policies for discoms.”
Talking more about the collaboration, Sidhartha Vermani, Executive Director – EPIC India, said, “Through this partnership, we aim to conduct evidence-based research through rigorous evaluations to answer critical policy questions in the power and related sectors in India. We will also conduct training and capacity building jointly with REC and RECPDCL on evidence-based policymaking.”
The MoU will enable the parties to work together towards improving discoms performance and efficiency with focus on the four core areas of knowledge sharing, access to high-quality data analysis, policy innovation and evaluation and training and capacity building.