Carbon footprint in INDIA

A Carbon footprint is the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product. In simple, it is expressed in term of the amount of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent of other green house gases, emitted. Carbon footprint is a subset of the ecological footprint. It is also like the water footprints. An individual, household, nation, organization or product’s carbon footprint can be measure by the green house gas emissions assessment with the help of carbon footprint calculators. Once we know the size of carbon footprint, a strategy can be devised to reduce it. Now days we all are working or concern about the measure to reduce the carbon footprint by using or promoting the use of solar or wind energy or reforestation. The concept of reducing the carbon footprints is known as Carbon offsetting.

There is no fixed parameter to judge the carbon footprints of any product in the world. According to The International organization for standardization. And Carbon trust there is no fix rule to measure the carbon footprints. For a single product, if you will use the different methodologies you will get the different results. Like for milk product, everyone is getting the different results. Because it is also depend upon the different type of fertilizer to grow the crops to feed to the cattails, the fuel truck to deliver the milk, and to power refrigerators to cooling. Many people use the lifecycle assessment to measure the CFP.

Now many companies are going to count the carbon footprint of their products. Wal-mart stores incorporation is the first company to count the carbon footprints and labels on the products. In India, many companies are coming as a trendsetter like India’s largest soap maker Hindustan Unilever limited India has implemented technology that resulted in significant carbon dioxide reduction in its manufacturing process. For instance, a single process change by India’s largest soap maker Hindustan Lever (HUL) earned the company 15,000 carbon emission reduction (CER) points over the last three years (it earns 15,000 CERs a year).

To put this in perspective, a company gets 1 CER point for the reduction of 1 tonne of carbon dioxide (Co2) under the United Nations CER programme.

If the CER is traded on the global carbon trading market, the makers of Lifebuoy, Lux and Hamam could potentially earn at least $150,000 (approximately Rs 75 lakh) from one process change alone since one CER trades at upwards of $10. Many companies in India are using the 5-R principle- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover and Renew.

According to KPMG India 83% of the Indian business leaders from wide range of industries, believes that they have fair knowledge on the issue of climate change and 48% thought that it is a serious issue which needs to be near the country’s top agenda. It is mandatory to all companies to submit corporate social responsibility reports(CSR) every year as per GRI( global reporting initiative)guidelines, as per triple bottom line approach, -social economic and environmental impact of company to the society. With 17.4% of the world's population, India accounts for 4.6% of global emissions - an average of 1.2 tonnes of CO₂per person. The distribution of current emissions points to an inverse relationship between climate change risk and responsibility. The world’s poorest people walk the Earth with a very light carbon footprint. We estimate the carbon footprint of the poorest 1 billion people on the planet at around 3 percent of the world’s total footprint. Living in vulnerable rural areas and urban slums, the poorest billion people are highly exposed to climate change threats for which they carry negligible responsibility. In India, the conventional cremations are adding big time to the CFP. Many times companies are reducing the carbon emission in one process and increasing in the other process. Government should come with the renewal energy law to reduce the carbon emission otherwise the GE product will come in the market. Like NESTLE is going to launch the GE product in India. BY- PURUSHOTAM SATI (FINANCE)