Premier Christy Clark used a B.C.-India business forum to tout her strategy to export liquefied natural gas to Asia. The leader of one of India's largest finance companies, meanwhile, said he's most interested in Canada's clean technology.

"We have a huge deficit on the energy side," Praveen Kadle, managing director and CEO of Tata Capital, told The Tyee. "And the conventional metrics of energy may not solve our problems, so we really need to look at alternate energy, renewable energy."

In Kadle's opinion, B.C. has done "remarkable work" developing sustainable technologies that could help meet India's energy needs. He met recently with Westport Innovations and Ballard Power Systems, two local cleantech firms expanding in India.

(Click here to read a Tyee profile on Westport reported from Beijing).

Conventional energy sources -- such as potential LNG exports from B.C. -- remain "highly important" for India's growth, Kadle said.

But in terms of clean technology, he added, "British Columbia… offers much more than the rest of the world."

Premier Clark did not overlook B.C.'s cleantech sector in her keynote address to the business conference. It's an area, she said, where "British Columbia and India lead in innovating around the world."

Yet Clark gave more prominence to natural gas, which she argued could "fuel India's explosive growth."

In a scrum afterwards, The Tyee asked Clark how she responds to critics who say natural gas expansion is anathema to B.C.'s climate change goals.

"Well, it's the cleanest fossil fuel on the planet," she said. "When we ship liquefied natural gas to India and China we will be displacing thermal coal and diesel power, which are much, much, much less sustainable."

Jason Bak, CEO of Vancouver-based Finavera Wind Energy, recently told The Tyee neither Clark's Liberals, nor Adrian Dix's NDP have a sustainable "vision" for province heading into the May election.

Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee.