Union Finance and Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has been awarded the 4th Carnot prize by Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania for his work in sustainable energy solutions and was felicitated today by a team from University of Pennsylvania who came to India.
According to the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy said that the award is in recognition of “the pathbreaking transformations in India’s energy sector” under the Modi government. Goyal was earlier the power minister. He was to be awarded the prize in October 2018 however had to skip the event because of the Amritsar train tragedy in which several people died. The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy also acknowledged India’s “solid footing to reach a 40 percent renewable mix by 2030”.
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Carnot Prize is considered as one of the most prestigious awards in the energy sector. The prize, which is given annually, recognises distinguished contributions to energy policy through scholarship or practice. Previously, the award has named Dr. Daniel Yergin, Vice chairman of IHS, Dr. Fatih Birol, Director of International Energy Agency, Gina McCarthy, a career public servant in fields of energy and environment as winners.
Accepting the award Goyal stated that it was “both a personal honour and a tribute to the efforts of all involved in this great work throughout India to be recognised with the Carnot Prize by the University of Pennsylvania”.
Goyal has decided that the award money of $25,000 will be given towards the International Solar Alliance to constitute the Diwakar Award which will every year recognise an outstanding organisation working for the betterment of special children and expanding the use of solar energy. The award money will be utilised to create a perpetual corpus and the interest income received on the corpus will be used for providing the award annually.
