Industrial decarbonisation initiative from IIM Calcutta

Call it an initiative to bridge the sustainability gap or something else! IIM Calcutta's Centre for Development and Environment Policy (CDEP) has now come up with a new initiative - Building Roadmaps for Industrial Decarbonisation and Green Economy (BRIDGE). CEDP has teamed up with The Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the Stichting SED Fund for the BRIDGE initiative. Broadly, BRIDGE has three interrelated objectives: first, contribute to the creation of knowledge and knowledge bases on how to accomplish an effective and just carbon transition; second, build awareness and train executives of public and private energy firms in evolving best practices on transition in India and other developing nations; and third, build awareness and expertise among postgraduate students and encourage doctoral research on low carbon transition finance and strategy, top IIMC officials said.

The first training programme under the BRIDGE Initiative was conducted for NTPC in April 2022. Subsequent editions of the training programme have been planned for NTPC, Coal India and ONGC.

"Climate change is the one of the most serious challenges facing humanity today and that this is IIM Calcutta's small contribution towards the process of decarbonisation," said Professor Uttam Sarkar, Director, IIMC.

Towards the objective of contributing to the creation of knowledge and knowledge bases, the Initiative's flagship activity is the publication of an Annual Report on pathways of transitioning to low carbon for industry in India and developing countries. While the findings of the annual reports will have a clear policy orientation, their primary objective is to help formulate a research agenda for developing pathways towards transition to low carbon for industry and creating knowledge support systems to enable the transition. Thus, it aspires to be a one-stop shop for anyone looking for extant and evolving knowledge, both in terms of theory and its applications, related to transition to low carbon for industry in India. This could help towards providing pointers for other countries in the global south while learning from them at the same time.

"Both the breadth and the depth of the contributions has been amazing as has been the passion with which arguments and ideas have been put forward. This augurs very well for the planned report," says Professor Runa Sarkar, Convenor of CDEP.