The results from the second CDP India report 2008 represents a continuity of positive start from 2007 by the Indian corporations measuring, reporting and managing greenhouse gas emissions. As we scaled up the scope of the CDP to top 200 Indian companies, it also resulted in increase in number of companies responding to the information request. However, this also resulted in marginal reduction in terms of per cent from 35% in 2007 (CDP5) to 31% in 2008 (CDP6). A silver lining, however, is marked improvement in quality of response and in-depth disclosure made by the companies bringing out the preparedness of the companies to deal with risks and opportunities associated with climate change. Equally encouraging was to find some of the non responding companies from 2007 report, responding this year. The second CDP report has raised two concerns – one, 69% (138) companies did not answer the CDP6 questionnaire in 2008, including some leading companies which responded in 2007 but not this year; and two, increase in number of companies, especially energy-intensive companies who declined to participate. Both of these concerns clearly demonstrate that there is still an enormous amount of work to be undertaken to raise the awareness and capacities of the Indian companies.
A significantly high percentage of companies who responded to CDP6 acknowledge climate change and GHG emissions as a major challenge. The Indian companies like their MNC counterparts realise that climate change is a serious issue that is likely to impact their business and financial performance, market and customers if not today then in the future. Some proactive companies have already started incorporating policy and decisions which will lower their carbon emissions. While some are putting plans in place towards this end, there are also some which have not done much to counter it inspite of recognizing its importance.
The companies also agree that GHG emissions presents business opportunities such as for those for clean energy, energy efficient products, and emission trading; and companies have made investments or are planning investments to tap this potential. However, when it comes to actually accounting their GHG emissions, only few are doing it, and this remains a cause of concern. The number of companies accounting for other GHG emissions is far lesser. Less than 20 companies are engaged in emissions trading, many of which are multinationals. Although majority of the companies have emission reduction plans and targets in place, in most cases, the targets are subjective instead of being quantitative and without a timeline. Companies are not yet prepared for predicting their future emissions and they also do not incorporate the costs of future emissions into capital investment decisions and this demands that as we take CDP into next year, these issues are built in as part of raising awareness and capacities of the Indian companies.
The current global and national economic situation and role the Indian business and industry are playing, provides an optimism that the these companies are geared towards mitigating and adapting to risks of climate change. This is demonstrated by the management structure set-up by these companies as well as their disclosure on emissions reductions through sustainability reporting. Encouragingly, there is evidence from the CDP survey of how Indian companies view the climate change challenge and the companies are engaging with the policy makers on issue of climate policy.
