Sumant Sinha

India is home to a fast-growing renewable energy sector, and Sumant Sinha is at the center of it. Since he founded ReNew in 2011, the company has become one of the country’s top renewable energy producers, building wind and solar plants across India to help meet its burgeoning energy demand. “Faster electrification is key to transitioning to a low-carbon economy,” he says. “We must aim for electricity to meet half of global energy demand by 2040.” 

With his ReNew platform, Sinha has become a leading voice in India and around the world advocating for the policies necessary to advance the energy transition—and he likes to think big. He is calling for a unified carbon market “with a single global carbon price that reflects the true costs of carbon emissions to society.” That will help move money “to areas where the potential for reducing emissions is the highest,” he says. And he has called for the creation of a new international climate finance institution solely focused on emissions reductions that can get “the best bang for the buck.”

This year, Sinha was appointed to co-chair the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a group of more than 130 CEOs from some of the world's largest companies. Sinha’s mission is to help these companies move forward with their own decarbonization efforts while also pushing policymakers for helpful rules. “You see good momentum in that group,” he says. “It gives you hope.”