Manisha Gulati

Manisha's experience covers all matters of energy policy and planning, scaling up of renewable energy sources, energy access, sustainability of biofuels, and the energy-environment-economic transition.

She started her career at TERI in India and was the Lead Energy Economist at WWF South Africa. She has worked in Asia and Africa where she has advised governments, business, global policy makers, donors, and civil society. At the WWF, she focused on building the evidence to influence public policy towards the scaling up of renewable energy. Her work centred on the socio-economic-environmental benefits of renewable energy and spanned multiple themes such as energy security, environmental benefits, industrialization of renewable energy technologies, distributed renewable energy technologies, and applications of renewable energy technologies within industrial processes.

On climate change, her work has focused on policy instruments for climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as economic assessment and analyses of climate change policies, options and technologies. In the past, she led WWF South Africa’s policy advisory and engagement on South Africa’s carbon tax. She also led the team that provided strategic advisory to South Africa’s Department of Public Enterprises on transition to a low carbon economy in relation to state owned companies under this Department’s portfolio. She was part of the team that conceptualized, established and implemented the food-energy-water nexus programme at WWF South Africa. Her work included investigating how the water-energy-food nexus approach can be a useful policy lens for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

She has a substantial and growing publication record, which includes over 15 book chapters, 5 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and over 15 opinion pieces and articles in newspapers and magazines. She has contributed to 4 books as a co-author.