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Rethinking Industrial Energy Efficiency: Business Models, Value Creation, and Co-evolutionary perspectives from the Indian Sugar-Bioenergy Sector

This seminar will be held in person in Jub-G32 and online via Microsoft Teams for those who cannot attend physically. If you would like to attend this seminar via Teams please contact Business School Research Support <business-research@sussex.ac.uk> for joining details

Abstract

Industrial energy efficiency is often understood as a techno-economic outcome achieved through improvements in individual firms, technologies and processes. This seminar presents findings from a PhD study of the Indian sugar-bioenergy sector that challenges this perspective. Drawing on three interconnected papers, the research examines how energy efficiency pathways evolve, why they differ across places, and how their benefits and costs are distributed across actors and systems. Using the business model lens, place-based analysis and co-evolutionary perspectives, the study argues that energy efficiency is a place-dependent, value-laden, and system-level phenomenon shaped by interactions among industrial, agricultural, institutional, and ecological systems within agro-industrial and bioenergy sectors.

Speaker Bio

Kanika Balani recently submitted her PhD thesis at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex. Her research examines industrial energy efficiency with a particular focus on the Indian sugar-bioenergy sector. Before joining Sussex, she worked for several years in the fields of energy policy and governance in India. Her research combines insights from business model thinking, evolutionary and ecological economics, and sustainability transitions studies to understand how industrial innovation pathways emerge and create different social, economic, and environmental outcomes. She is particularly interested in industrial decarbonisation, bioenergy and circularity.

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By: Yvonne Barnes
Last updated: Monday, 2 November 2026