UVA Darden Alumnus Manoj Sinha Named in TIME’s Top 100 Climate Leaders

Darden Alumnus Manoj Sinha (MBA ’09) has been named to the TIME 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders list for 2023.

Sinha is CEO and founder of Husk Power Systems, a mini-grid power company which operates across Asia and Africa. The company owns the world’s largest number of mini-grids, and it raised a record $103 million in October.

A Husk Power Systems minigrid. Via Husk Power Systems

Sinha and his co-founder Chip Ransler (MBA ’09) launched the company in 2008, aiming to address the lack of reliable and affordable power affecting three billion people around the world. Today the company provides electricity to 50,000 households and businesses through its renewable energy-powered minigrids. Husk Power Systems is one of many successful ventures rising from Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology.

The inaugural TIME 100 Climate list highlights business leaders driving positive, tangible impact on climate change today.

TIME: What is the single most important action you think the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?

Manoj Sinha: While it’s tempting to point at one action, or a time period of 12 months, the reality is that it’s going to require long-term systemic change and many levers to solve the climate crisis. Action requires every stakeholder to take a major step in the right direction, as that will have a multiplier effect.

For governments that’s a tax on carbon. For corporations, that’s requiring themselves to offset at least Scope 1 and 2 emissions [from their operations and energy use respectively]. For investors, that’s financing the true innovators who can dramatically increase the renewable energy mix for every possible sector including hard to abate sectors like steel, as well as electricity and transportation.

Read TIME’s full Q&A with Sinha here.