Mahindra Addressing Climate Change With Smart Manufacturing Initiatives

Climate change today is one of the biggest concerns for humanity. The impacts of industrialisation and global warming have played a definitive role in the evolution of how businesses are done. In India, one of the foremost industrial groups to make strong commitments towards climate protection is the Mahindra Group. Spearheading the movement for the Mahindra Group is its Igatpuri facility, which recently declared its carbon neutral status without the purchase of carbon credits.

- Joshua David Luther

As per the Paris Agreement, nations collectively need to address concerns over rising global temperatures and work towards limiting it to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement recognises that in doing so, risks and impacts of climate change would be reduced significantly.

Working on the lines of the Paris Agreement, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) prepared a special report in 2018 to highlight the impact of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. The report indicated that human activities have brought about a rise in global temperatures by 1 °C above pre-industrial levels. It also suggests that global warming is likely to reach 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052. According to the IPCC special report, warming from anthropogenic emissions will last for a century to millennia, causing long-term changes such as rise in ocean levels, drought in some regions, extreme heat in some and heavy precipitation in several regions.

Giving due importance to the issue, many companies have started to change the way they think and operate. The Climate Group, a non-profit organisation has been working in this area to facilitate and accelerate climate action with many companies. According to its reports, around 49 bn tonne of CO2 is released into the atmosphere every year, of which industry (32 %), buildings (18 %) and energy sectors (11 %) were the major contributors. The Climate Group recently initiated the EP 100 programme wherein it brings together companies that are committed to using energy more efficiently, lower greenhouse gasses and accelerate a clean economy.