Sustainability and Carbon Management: Pathways to a Low-Carbon Future

Sustainable development and Climate change are major planetary concern and demand immediate attention from policy makers, practitioners and researchers. Sustainable development represents meeting the current needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generation their own needs. Which balance the social prosperity, economic progress, and Environmental preservation. Climate change is a result of human activity whether directly or indirectly, that changes the atmosphere, beyond natural climate variations over similar time period (UNFCCC, 1992). Carbon emission is a major driver of climate change, with accelerated industrial growth and growing power consumption, carbon emission has shown constant growth at international level. Climate change has become a major concern and garnered attention globally. Therefore, countries are paying effort to minimize the carbon emission and its influence around the universe. In 2015, United Nations published Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), emphasizing the climate change, and its effect as a principal priority. In the same period,178 countries ratified the Paris Agreement, agreeing to mitigate global temperature escalation. emerging economy like India which is counted among the world most populated and rapidly growing country encounter distinct challenges in combating climate change. The significant share of country’s carbon foot print is triggered from its energy production, transportation activities, and industrial development.  Observing these obstacle, Indian government initiated several efforts to adopt carbon off set approaches in to its national climate change policies and encourage sustainable development goal. The goal can be achieved through increase the use of green energy, optimizing energy use, facilitating the progress of eco-friendly technologies. For this they required structured approach that integrates evaluation, optimization, invention, and governance.  The core in this process is evaluation and monitoring which constitute the basis for insightful decision making. To achieve this, the technique i.e., Carbon accounting is applied which is an architecture to capture and track the green emission by any organization. The motive behind the Green House Gas (GHG) accounting is to fulfill ethical responsibility and meet social obligations. Other motive is public company ranking, in-depth financial analysis and possibilities for cost optimization.  the technique assists the investor to understand the climate risk of the companies in which they deploy fund. Several Indian large capital companies adopted carbon accounting such as Wipro, Mahindra &Mahindra, and Reliance industries. once the evaluation part is implemented companies need to focus on minimization and control strategies. However, emission cannot be completely eliminated, neutralization and compensation measure becomes necessary to attain carbon neutrality. Therefore, either they have to engage in the compliance market or voluntary market which assist offsetting remaining emission at both national and global climate framework. Where in the compliance market government set a cap on total emission for the entities and if they cross the limit, they must buy carbon credit. There are several participants in compliance market such as NTPC limited, Tata Power, SAIL limited, Vedanta Ltd. On the other hand, voluntary market is a non-mandatory market in which participant purchase carbon credit that minimize or remove emissions.