How are corporates envisioning India’s stance on emission norms with regards to the IPCC report?
The recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents predictions on the alarming rate of climate change in the coming years. While the country level goals and ambitions are critical to deliver on, to ensure that we mitigate the growing climate crisis, corporates can definitely play a more active role in helping India achieve its targets. These efforts need to be backed by attentive and timely regulation of industrial practices, law and behavioral change, as well as a collaboration between public and private to work together to achieve the sustainability goals while ensuring a steady economic development. Adopting solutions such as renewable energy and a circular economy approach can help reduce emissions in India.
Corporates around the world and India acknowledge the need to accelerate our policies of net-zero, circular business model, sustainable manufacturing and others. With the recent and up-to-date understanding of the risks and the scarcity of time that challenges us, the need is to ensure the right resources, including finance is realigned into our strategy and plan with regard to our climate goals. In order to bring about climate stability, we will collectively have to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and reach net-zero CO2 emissions.
How can corporates support India in striking a balance between economic development and tackling climate change?
As responsible stakeholders in the economy, corporates must support the government in meeting the required targets to reduce carbon emissions and moving towards a society that is driven by holistic growth of the country.
Corporates must look at supporting the government in achieving this by aligning their businesses to policies that advocate for reduction in carbon emissions. Measures to reducing CO2 emissions should go beyond the surface level and into every step of an organization’s business agenda.
Another way to achieve this is through circular economy. It has the potential to reduce carbon emissions and enables continuous economic development. A circular business model demands corporates to switch to renewable sources of energy, reducing the use of toxic substances and cutting down the extraction of raw materials. This reduces the effort and energy that goes into extraction and production from raw materials.
For example, Grundfos has adopted sustainability goals to cut down CO2 emissions and water usage. Through periodical measurement and consistent efforts towards sustainability, Grundfos aims to support in the fight against climate change. We made it our goal to halve our own CO2 emissions by 2025 compared to 2008 baseline, which demands relentless efforts to making our products more energy-saving and further exploring the array of renewable energy. We also aim to reduce 50% of our own water withdrawal. We are striving towards being “climate-positive” by the year 2030. When it comes to our products and solutions, we take responsibility for making a genuine difference in the world by helping our existing and new customers meet their needs in an ever-more energy and water-efficient manner, through our work with the product life-cycle and through intelligent, efficient and sustainable offerings.
What can India do to fight the estimated increase in global warming?
India is already on the journey of solarization, which is a strong and brilliant step towards a greener future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently appreciated India achieving an impressive 100 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. Tapping into the adequate availability of solar energy can reduce the burden on fossil fuels that contribute to carbon emissions in the country. The government has also been encouraging and promoting the use of solar energy as an alternative to non-renewable sources of power, for all kinds of purposes such as industries, residential buildings, agriculture and more. Initiatives such as the PM KUSUM Scheme that aims to deploy solar pumps for Indian farmers would revolutionize the irrigation sector to being more sustainable.
India has been progressively working with other nations to ensure green growth in the country. For instance, the Green Strategic Partnership with Denmark is a way for India to achieve its climate goals. This partnership focusses on expanding economic ties, green growth and cooperation on global challenges such as climate change, with a priority on implementing the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
What transformation does the manufacturing industry foresee to reduce carbon emissions?
Designing manufacturing and industrial facilities and processes to be more sustainable can come a long way in reducing their overall carbon and water footprints. This can be achieved by investing in energy and water efficient solutions. Another way is to make a conscious shift to sustainable and renewable energy forms such as solar that significantly reduce the emission of CO2 to produce power, instead of further causing a strain on our fossil fuel resources. Industries must also rethink their own supply chain footprint and try their best to source materials locally. Being mindful of reusing discharge such as wastewater that come from manufacturing activities creates a circular model and reduces the burden on groundwater.
How are your company’s products helping control climate crisis and taking a sustainable business model?
Grundfos is a global leader in water technology that develops advanced pump solutions that are energy and water conserving. At Grundfos, we aim at making our products more environment friendly through our consistent and focused research and development. Grundfos has sustainability at the core of its business. Solutions by Grundfos have proven and are continuing to be immensely energy efficient. Grundfos is the first pump company in India to supply all products with IE3 efficiency way back in 2015-2016. Now, Grundfos’ E-pumps are manufactured with premium IE5 efficiency and have inbuilt variable frequency drive motors. This helps reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, supporting in fighting climate change. Last year, Grundfos E-pumps helped in cutting down on 270,000 tons of CO2 emissions globally. Our products are equipped to provide reliable water management solutions from water supply, distribution, wastewater treatment and reuse, in the most energy efficient manner that can directly help in reducing carbon emissions.
In order to enable a sustainable growth, we are moving towards a circular business model from a linear approach. This includes resource recovery and circularity of supply chains, products, manufacturing, and distribution. Through our take-back programme, Grundfos aims to perform disassembly and remanufacturing, ultimately cutting down on the waste that would otherwise end up in landfills.
Grundfos also made strides to make its transportation more decarbonized. We have taken all measures to consolidate goods delivered to customers and we also club inbound and outbound materials to both customers and between Grundfos’ plants. Another important step has been procuring raw materials locally for both production sites in Chennai and Ahmedabad.