Sharad Verma, Managing Director and Senior Partner, Boston Consulting Group brought climate change, sustainable mobility and inflation to the fore as he spoke at SIAM’s 62nd Annual Convention in New Delhi on September 15.
Verma urged the Auto Inc that it should examine the carbon soar holistically rather than in isolation of the sector. He said, “Transportation sector in India contributes about 10% of the carbon emissions. However, when you think about the electricity supply, which has come into power with EVs, or the refining industry, which provides the petroleum that goes into our cars, the number is of a much larger module”.
“So it’s not sufficient just to talk about what the penetration level of alternate fuels and electric vehicles is going to be on the road. We need to take a full system’s view around it if we want to talk about fundamental reduction in carbon across the ecosystem”, he added.
Verma went on to laud the approach globally towards investments in renewable energies like hydrogen, citing the subsidies and capital pumped into the sector by specific governments as he highlighted that “making hydrogen in the US right now is perhaps the most attractive option among all levelised costs of energy sources in this space”.
Verma outlined how the geopolitical turmoil in recent times has contributed to the rising inflation, which has led to a surge in the costs of raw materials. He explained, “There were two unions that helped in keeping the inflation rates slow in the world; one was China feeding products to the US and the other Russia supplying cheap energy into Europe,”
“Both of those blocks do not exist anymore. Those were fundamental blocks driving down inflation in the world.”, he added.
In line with creating a robust circular infrastructure, which means recycling, or the second life of usage, he brought concerns to the after-life of solutions the industry is looking at to prevent carbon emissions and urged it to keep a futuristic approach as he said, “Thinking about circularity from a very early stage is quite important in our country.”
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