Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

This is Shaswata, and I’ll be your Green Margins guide this week. Climate tech, energy storage, and pretty much anything else you’d care to name in this burgeoning new green economy of ours, is an obsession of mine. 

Do you know what prevents 3,000-odd villagers in the sinking island of Ghoramara, in the Sundarban archipelago of West Bengal, India, from slipping into the darkness of the pre-Edison era? 

Solar panels.

These shiny blue-black arrays recline proudly on Ghoramara’s tiled or tarpaulin-covered roofs, existing easily beside mud-brick walls, brown coconut trees, and yellowing paddy fields. I saw them on pretty much every house when I was there last year:

Distributed at subsidised rates by the government about a decade ago, they are the only source of electricity in this cyclone-ravaged island, which is only accessible by fishing trawlers. Electric lines have never reached its broken shores. 

Solar has become the answer to energy-hungry India’s clean power appetite, thanks to the far fewer limitations it has compared to alternatives like wind.