The India GHG Program of WRI India with its partner group CII held the first of two Working group discussions on June 26th for the Heavy Engineering / Automotive sector. The participants were major OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers mostly from the automotive sector with few representing other industries and the government.The purpose of the focus groups meeting was to identify key areas within which GHG emissions could be measured and to ideate on the methodologies and tools required.
The meeting began with trying to identify the points at which business wished to begin collecting emission data, whether individual processes or at the plant level emissions. The consensus was that individual company level emissions data was not enough, a contiguous narrative across the supply chains was needed, backed by significant policy change. The need to bring industry clusters, vendors and suppliers, into the company's inventory and the feasibility of such an approach was addressed. A possible solution was to leverage vendor meetings, to gauge vendor and supplier stance on emissions as well as build awareness among them.
Personal experiences about losing tenders due to missing emission data was integral in driving home the need to take pre-emptive steps towards emission control and reporting. It was almost unanimously felt that the in the coming months, emission management and reporting would become a legal compulsion. Opinions were divided whether there was need to address the same before legislation came into play.
The following next steps were agreed upon -
- Build life cycle awareness and sensitise supply chain
- Collate existing data to act as a benchmark for companies
- Publicise existing good practises and publish case studies on the measurable benefits
- Develop sector specific business cases and road maps for MSMEs and large businesses