| | FEBRUARY 20218DECARBONIZATION & SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: TECHNOLOGY & WHAT IT CAN DO?Carbon neutrality is a buzz word not just among the governments & environmental-ists but also among the corporate houses. Microsoft has announced its plans of going carbon negative by 2030. Amazon pledged to go car-bon natural by 2040. Starbucks has committed to be resource positive within a decade by reducing carbon emissions, water withdrawl, and landfill waste by 50 percent. Unilever aims going carbon neutral by 2039. But how serious are they?Let's start with knowing what consumers want. According to a 2018 survey, 88 percent of consum-ers prefer companies that help them live more sus-tainably. For the past several decades, consumers have been `kind of fooled' with the buzzy marketing terms through which corporates greenwashing have become a common practice. Consumers are fed with the thought that a company's products are more eco-friendly than they actually are. But the fact is that with time consumers have become more cautiously of what they buy. Sustainable products sure come under this bracket. Hence it is important that corpo-rates start giving better & clear information to their consumers about from where they source their sus-tainable raw materials and be more specific about the sustainable product they use. Indeed this, on one end, will make the companies more careful and go beyond just the buzz word, on the other end, consumers will feel more product to be associated with the brand, knowing what and how sustainable the brands are.However, the path to carbon neutral is different for every business. Environmentally minded compa-nies are generally focused on reducing their overall carbon footprint. Hence just offsetting emissions isn't enough to substantially halt climate change. While moderating a session hosted during the recently concluded NASSCOM Technology and Leadership Forum, Karthik Natarajan, President & COO, Cyient, said, "Companies that understand the triple bottom line impact ­ social, environment and financial ­ of greenhouse gas emissions have enough reason to work towards carbon neutrality". So how is Cyient achieving this? He adds, "At Cyient, we are work-ing toward helping our customers improve their contribution toward creating a decarbonized planet through our Design for circularity consulting and engineering practice. Decisions that businesses like us make will determine the course of where we are by 2040".The session also saw Kelvin Wing, CIO, EDF Ener-gy talking about how they are looking at ways to help Britain achieve the net-zero goal by 2030. He said, "While figuring out our strategy to achieve the net zero emissions goal, we must join the dots and make the connection between technology and how it can help us do things differently. It is the baby steps we need to deliver in order to get the big wins. As lead-ers, it is incumbent on us to talk about what it means to achieve the net-zero goal. We should also be more disciplined in utilizing resources, recycling, and re-ducing resource consumption where not needed".While still at a nascent phase, nearly 24 compa-nies pledged to be carbon neutral in India. This list includes Tata, Reliance, Mahindra, ITC, ACC, Adani and Dalmia Cement, who signed a declaration on cli-mate change last November by voluntarily pledging to move towards carbon neutrality. Though the coun-try has not committed to net zero emission target as its national goal, the nine mitigation measures listed by these companies in the declaration form includes IN FOCUSBy CEO Insights Team
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