Climate change has been termed as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today. The phenomenon has the potential to cause irreversible changes to global weather patterns thereby causing widespread hardships to all living beings on the planet. Some of the impacts include changing temperature / precipitation patterns, rising sea levels and more extreme events like droughts, heatwaves, floods, cyclones, hurricanes, etc. These further impact various other natural systems related to water provisioning, food production, disease and pest management. While there are some geographies which may be positively impacted, majority of climate change impacts are expected to be detrimental. Balancing energy needs for economic development with environmental and economic sustainability is a critical challenge for our society.

Businesses too are impacted gravely by climate change. In addition to the physical risks it poses to business assets and operations, climate change has also led to increased pressure on businesses from various stakeholders including regulators, investors, customers, employees and the civil society at large to drastically reduce their emissions.

Over the last 3 decades, significant efforts have been put globally to control runaway climate change but there is growing realization that much more needs to be done and the window of opportunity is shrinking fast. International agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement have enabled concerted action to combat climate change. More and more governments have made commitments in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to collectively limit global warming to well-below 2⁰C.

But while governments do their bit to meet their commitments, a significantly large part of this responsibility will fall upon businesses and they will be expected to dramatically reduce their carbon footprints. Current scientific literature suggests that over the next two decades, businesses will have to reduce their emissions by 60-90% from current levels. Facilitating this level of emission reduction will require trillions of dollars in investments to spur technological innovation and rapid deployment of renewable and low-carbon technologies and energy efficiency measures. All efforts will have to be augmented by carbon capture and utilization or sequestration efforts.

Tata group started engaging on climate change as early as December 2007 when Mr. Ratan Tata suggested that Tata companies should play a more responsible role in mitigating the impact of climate change. This resulted in a two-pronged approach. At one level, a behaviour change among Tata companies was initiated by incorporating climate change in the Tata Code of Conduct. At another level, a series of plans, policies and initiatives were drawn up for companies by setting up a Centre of Excellence (later renamed as Tata Sustainability Group).