A Convening Of Changemakers: Mumbai’s top minds working on building a more climate-resilient planet were at The Free Press Journal’s first conclave on sustainability, titled ‘Changemakers: Driving A Sustainable Maharashtra’. Organised as part of The Sustainability Network of the FPJ, the conclave comprised three panel discussions, on infrastructure, energy and circularity in cities
Maharashtra, most likely to become the country’s first state to achieve a trillion dollar economy make, has its sights set on becoming a renewable energy leader alongside growth in other areas. At a panel discussion titled Maharashtra’s Energy Transition, expert panelists including industry leaders and policymakers deliberated on the challenges, opportunities, and necessary policy frameworks to accelerate the transition while ensuring justice for communities and groups that may be adversely impacted by the migration away from fossil fuels.
Abhijit Ghorpade, director of the Maharashtra state government’s climate action cell, said alongside the country’s net-zero targets for 2070 announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in 2021, and alongside targets to reduce 45% carbon emission and enhance the country’s carbon sink by five times by 2030, the state government of Maharashtra has outlined plans to reduce dependence on fossil fuels from 74% to 50%, in “a massive energy transition”. He said by 2025, the entire fleet of buses in Mumbai will run on renewables, while the state transport corporation will also have 5,000 green buses.
“Now it is compulsory for all public buildings to be green buildings; we have recently launched the decarbonisation roadmap for the building sector,” he said, a step critical for the most urbanised state in India.
Ghorpade also spoke on the ‘just transitions’ roadmap for the state. “We are the largest sub-national economy of the country. We are trying to achieve our economic goal while also achieving the net zero objectives,” he said. “In order to ensure that the transition is not painful, so that it becomes inclusive, just and fair, we have to adopt a just transitions policy that tackles any disruption of the job market, we must have a massive skilling programme, etc.”
S Lakshminarayanan, executive director (sustainability) of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd ,spoke on various measures that the oil industry, a hard to abate industry, is taking to reduce emissions while maintaining India’s energy security.
Indian per capita energy consumption, about 1.6 tonne per year, is much lower than in the West where it ranges between 5 tonne per year and 10 tonne per. “When we’re talking about how we will grow, I can safely assume that this 1.6 tonne per year will go to about 3 tonne per year… If society has to prosper, energy consumption will grow. We have a target of 500 GW of renewable energy installed capacity, which is approximately about 7 lakh to 8 lakh GWh (giga watt hour) of energy per year. Our consumption today is about 16 lakh gwH per year. If I say by 2030 energy consumption is going to double, it means this entire 500 GW will not be sufficient to take care of the growth alone. This means the oil industry will have to be there” he said.
Despite the countrywide transition to renewables, IOCL continues to expect a CAGR of 3% for the coming years, woven while they themselves move towards renewable energy in their internal operations.
If oil continues to be important to energy security, emissions would be reduced through biofuels, he said, explaining that a 15% blending of ethanol in MS (motor spirits) cuts 15% of emissions. “The industries consuming fuel need not do anything — the emissions are automatically coming down.” Lakshminarayanan also spoke of the nascent but growing alternatives of bio-diesel, and compressed biogas.
While the automobile industry is witnessing a quick move away from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles, Sandeep Bangia, head of Strategy, Transformation and E-Mobility at Gulf Oil Lubricants India Limited, stressed on the need to incentivise EVs. “An electric two-wheeler is cheaper to buy and run. Today, 80% of three wheelers in India are EVs,” he said, adding that charging stations are also growing in numbers.
He added, “Recently, the central government has launched a zero carbon emission trucking policy which will play a huge role in fighting against pollution as transport sector contributes to 20% of carbon emissions and in cities like Delhi, it goes up to as high as 50%.”
Shivang Mahadevia, head, Corporate Strategy and Sustainability at Tata Chemicals, highlighted chemical industry’s efforts to curb emissions. “We are an energy intensive industry and although we are trying to move away from fossil fuel, we cannot scale the same results. The industry is collectively trying to address the issue but we need a step-by-step approach to bring in massive change. Since we cannot do away with coal as of now, we need to co-fire with biomass. Simultaneously, we need to ensure electrification of factories which will become cheaper as well as helpful to the environment,” said Mahadevia.
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