Going green: Tatas appoint E&Y, McKinsey to cut carbon emission

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MUMBAI: The Tatas are going green. In a bid to cut down on its greenhouse gas emissions, the house of Tatas has appointed consultancy majors McKinsey and Ernst & Young to assist its top five polluting companies reduce their carbon footprint.

Group companies like Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals and Tata Consultancy Services contribute 80% of the group’s overall emissions. Tata Sons director J J Irani told TOI that these companies will aim to reduce their emissions to the ideal levels - based on global benchmarks - in the next three years.

For instance, Tata Steel’s (Jamshedpur) carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are currently at two tonne per tonne of liquid steel, whereas the ideal world standard is 1.5 tonne of CO2 per tonne of liquid steel. In fact, group company, Corus is better than Tata Steel in this respect, with an emission level of 1.7 tonne.

The group has formed a steering committee, headed by Irani, to look at how all of the group’s 100-odd entities could reduce emissions over a period of time.

Even while McKinsey and Ernst & Young would focus on the top five polluting companies and around 300 group employees are getting trained to spread the learnings across other group units for the next phase. The second phase will include companies like Voltas, in addition to its telecom and construction equipment arms.

Since the Tatas view this as a business opportunity, Irani said, a special climate change cell has been set up to roll out the programme and advise CEOs across the group. This exercise is said to be of the same magnitude as the one conducted by the group on quality, some years back, under TQM (total quality management) services.

“I must admit that we’ve been rather slow in catching up with the requirement of becoming a low-carbon economy. The Tatas are planning to play some role in understanding how we could reduce our emissions so that we can leave a better world for our children and grandchildren,” said Irani.

Interestingly, one of the group’s smaller companies, Tata Sponge, was the first to get its Orissa unit registered as a clean development mechanism project some seven years back. It was only recently that the Tata group became a member of the Global Leadership Technology Exchange (GLTE), which is based on Scandinavia.

GLTE is a consortium formed to help industrial groups share technology and innovations to improve their environmental and business performance.

The Tatas are interacting with companies like Ikea, Siemens, Wilh Wilhelmsen, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank among others to search for solutions to environmental problems.