Harshit is a Research Scholar at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. His research is primarily aimed to evaluate planning and policy measures for Sustainable Energy Transition in Global South. Over the past many years, he has been working on evaluating the scope and relevance of decentralised and community oriented renewable energy systems for attaining clean and reliable electricity and cooking access for underserved communities. His doctoral thesis was aimed to investigate the role of community energy systems towards people-centric energy transition in India.
Harshit worked as a Research Associate at Centre for Sustainability Transition: Energy, Environment, and Resilience (STEER) at School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University. He worked jointly on Community Energy and Sustainable Energy Transition (CESET) project in East Africa and Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme. His work in CESET project was focused on evaluating the landscape of Community Energy Systems in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique. His research investigates different ways in which Community Energy projects contributes in building resilience. He worked on developing a framework for realizing sustainable and resilient Community Energy Systems in East Africa. In addition, he worked on providing technical and research mentoring to MECS partners for scaling up of modern energy cooking services through community energy resilience in Global South.
Harshit has an interdisciplinary research background across engineering and social sciences. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and submitted his PhD thesis on Sustainable Energy Transitions in India recently. Harshit authored multiple collaborative research articles published in reputed journals, conferences, policy briefs, and technical reports. He is the recipient of prestigious Fulbright Fellowship (2021) at University of Nebraska Lincoln, USA for his research on enhancing rural energy access for energy deprived communities in India.