ET Boardroom Dialogues 2023: Leaders chart roadmap for accelerating the transition to a carbon-neutral future

ET Spotlight

In a series of conversations moderated by Economic Times Editors, eminent industry leaders from across various sectors, including FMCG, logistics, and industrials, highlighted the role of renewable energy, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration, and science-based targets in achieving sustainable business growth. A key highlight of Day 2 of ET Boardroom Dialogues, which kicked off on the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5, was the panel discussion on the theme: ‘Roadmap to accelerating the net-zero transition and achieving carbon footprint reduction.’ Panelists included Jitendra Mahajan, Chief Supply & Sustainability Officer, Diageo India; Rampraveen Swaminathan, Managing Director & CEO, Mahindra Logistics; Sunil Alagh, Former Managing Director & CEO, Britannia Industries Ltd; Pranav Master, Director-Consulting, CRISIL Market Intelligence and Analytics; Dr. Pradeep Panigrahi, Head – Corporate Sustainability, Larsen & Toubro; Tejashree Joshi, General Manager & Head (Environment & Sustainability), M/s. Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd.; and Asif Bhamla, Founder, Bhamla Foundation.

Outlining business best practices for realising net-zero goals was Anirban Mukherjee, Managing Director and Partner, BCG India and India Lead for Climate & Sustainability, BCG, who spoke on the theme: ‘From Ambition to Action: Strategies for Scaling Up Sustainable Solutions and Achieving Carbon Neutrality’.

In a separate fireside chat, Madhulika Sharma, VP and Chief Sustainability Officer of ITC, elaborated on ITC’s Sustainability 2.0 agenda and shed light on how the consumer company is setting a blueprint across the wide range of sectors it operates in to and engaging multiple stakeholders to achieve its decarbonisation goal.

Speaking at the panel discussion moderated by Anupriya Nair, Executive Producer, Economic Times Podcasts, Diageo India’s Jitendra Mahajan highlighted the company’s ambitious 10-year ESG action plan to help create a more inclusive and sustainable world through the three key pillars of ‘Society 2030: Spirit of Progress,’ which are to promote positive drinking, champion inclusion and diversity, and pioneer grain-to-glass sustainability.

Towards this end, Mahajan outlined some of the progress made in the last three years: “At this point of time, we have reduced direct emission by almost 95% from the baseline, leaving only 6,000 tons of carbon emission, and 80% of those direct operation emissions are a result of the residual emission from renewable fuel, which we burn in our boiler. What it also means is that 100% of fossil fuel has been eliminated in our direct operations at this point of time. We use largely solar-powered as well as biomass-based turbines for renewable energy.”

On the logistics front, Rampraveen Swaminathan, Managing Director & CEO, Mahindra Logistics, said: “We’ve got a goal to be carbon neutral by 2040. Glass to green to glass …. We’ve laid out some targets but these are based around four broad pillars. The first one is decarbonising freight, which is the largest part of our business. 30% of our last-mile is now an electric programme that has 20% of CNG. We’re investing in what we call green warehousing. We’ve been adopting circularity in our operating processes. And that means a lot of change in the management in terms of the culture shift.”

Swaminathan stressed upon the importance of advocacy with customers. “So, we have to invest in working with our customers and help them move the needle. And that’s a fair amount of work…which actually allows our customers to understand their carbon footprint when they operate with us. And so we can partner with them on reducing footprint. And the accountability part is the internal piece. So, all our leaders, for example, are a part of the annual performance space linked to sustainability performance.”

Greening the ground
Focusing upon the aspect of bringing about a change in mindset across the board, which in itself is a big challenge, Dr. Pradeep Panigrahi, Head – Corporate Sustainability, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), spoke from the standpoint of driving corporate sustainability leadership at a behemoth like LNT.

“If the senior management is involved in the planning process, in the diligent pursuit, delivery process centre … I think that is the crux of the whole thing. It’s become a priority in the boardroom, it’s on the agenda, very high up versus those that were taken up 10-15 years ago,” said Dr. Panigrahi.

Shedding light on the change on ground was Asif Bhamla, Founder, Bhamla Foundation, especially in a city like Mumbai, which is densely populated with its share of infrastructural hazards. “With all of this, to work on the environmental endeavour also becomes a very big challenge. Galvanising ground-level work requires the support of the local political arrangements, resident involvement, and CSR activity.” The foundation steers work in the segregation of wet and dry waste, which transforms electricity to illuminate the entire vicinity of the high-profile area like Pali Hill in Bandra.

When asked about the difficulties of waste segregation usage or wastage, for a legacy company like Godrej—which is in the space of furniture and cybersecurity— Tejashree Joshi, General Manager & Head (Environment & Sustainability), M/s. Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd., delved into some of the innovations.

“For Godrej, driving sustainability isn’t new. It’s been done for decades, and the company has identified the environment as one of its values,” said Joshi. Today, the organisation is looking at mainstreaming sustainability. “At the same time, we look at sustainability in terms of materiality, that is it has to be contextual to the organisation’s activities and its impact. Because if you see sustainability, it’s a wide umbrella, and you could keep grappling around what is to be done, and then really not see the outcome that you really want to see,” said Joshi.

So, in essence, translating those targets on ground has been the focus of its sustainability journey and it’s doing so by involving employees and partners at every stage of development. “When we’re talking about circularity and waste management, we are, in fact, relooking what waste means in terms of resource, and instead of just talking about recycling, we’re looking at upgrading, or upcycling raw material where the value of the material improves, because its intended use is not just recycling, and that only happens when there is a lot of innovation. And you encourage not only your employees to think from a design point of perspective, but also have your partners on board for co-creation and development of these solutions,” said Joshi as a future-ready decarbonisation agenda.

Sunil Alagh, Former Managing Director and CEO, Britannia Industries Ltd. then shed light on how to sell sustainability better to the consumer, while Pranav Master, Director-Consulting, CRISIL Market Intelligence and Analytics, divided into the challenges that corporates are facing at this point.

From clarity in policies to evolved partnership engagement, the evolving space of sustainability will continue to gain momentum and drive data-driven business decisions and ecosystem transformation with corporate leadership and involvement of social stakeholders.

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