Varun Sivaram

Bill Gates has called Sivaram's 2016 essay on clean energy innovation in Foreign Affairs magazine "One of the best arguments I've read for why the U.S. should invest in an energy revolution." The Financial Times called his book Taming the Sun "the best available overview of where the industry finds itself today, and a road map for how it can reach that brighter future," and The Economist called it "prescient...and readable." TIME Magazine named him to its inaugural TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world; Forbes named him to its 30 under 30 in Law and Policy; Grist named him one of its top 50 leaders in sustainability; and PV Magazine called him "The Hamilton of the Solar Industry."

Sivaram is the author of Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet. Taming the Sun explores the potential of solar energy, the world's cheapest and fastest-growing power source, to one day supply most of the world's energy needs. Sivaram argues, however, that solar's current surge is on track to stall, dimming prospects for averting catastrophic climate change. Brightening those prospects, he concludes, will require innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems.

Varun Srinivasan Sivaram (born 1989) is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of ReNew Power, India's largest renewable energy company. He was previously the Philip D. Reed fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank and membership organization, and director of its Program on Energy Security and Climate Change. He is an expert on clean energy technology, climate change, and sustainable urbanization.