Nisha Menon is a mechanical engineer with a Master’s degree in Energy Conservation and Management. She has over 30 years of experience in sustainable energy. In the past 22 years at DESL, she has been involved in managing and delivering a diverse range of consulting assignments including resource efficiency (energy and water), cleaner production and lean management; renewable energy based power generation (captive, cogeneration, independent power plants) and solid waste management (waste-to-energy) projects. These assignments have been delivered in India and nearly 20 countries across the globe.

As head of operations of DESL, she is responsible for delivery of projects across energy consulting and engineering consulting verticals.

She has managed assignments involving resource efficiency and cleaner production across a spectrum of industries (over 500 large and SME), where the services provided ranged from diagnostics, technical support for implementation and post-implementation verification of savings. These assignments include mandates from the private sector and the development sector (led by multilateral and bi-lateral development organizations). The drivers of these assignments range from energy cost saving, introducing new energy efficiency and cleaner production technologies, achieving sustainability targets, and more recently achieving decarbonization goals. In line with the drivers, the complexity of solutions range from retrofits to a combination of demand and supply side interventions. She is also involved in oversight of implementation under different business models.

In the renewable energy segment, Nisha has worked on several biomass energy technologies (conventional combustion, bagasse based cogeneration) and waste-to-energy projects; providing feasibility studies, structuring projects for implementation under public-private-partnerships and due diligence for lenders (international and Indian). She has also been involved in a few hydro and solar power projects, where the scope was limited to pre-feasibility studies. More recently, Nisha has been involved in resource assessment studies and fuel price discovery studies for setting up of second generation biofuel projects.

As part of DESL’s strategic consulting portfolio, Nisha has been involved in several market assessment studies - natural gas based trigeneration, solar water heating applications in industries, resource efficiency and cleaner production plans for provinces (states), fuel pricing strategies for biomass; among others.