Sustainable development, energy conservation, high on corporate agenda: Delhi Meet

In a recent Techgig.com meet, industry leaders discussed the need to use technology to further the green agenda of businesses

Understanding the urgent need for environmental reforms, businesses around the world are increasingly adopting green initiatives. Technological innovations and green solutions are enabling organisations to cut down their carbon foot-print. While advancements in technology have catapulted us into a different era, this has had some major environmental repercussions as well. In 2012, data centres worldwide consumed 322 TeraWattHours of electricity – the environmental impact of which is equivalent to cutting down billions of trees. Recently, news reports have been published about pollution due to internet which is estimated at 830 million Tonnes of CO2 every year. With the agenda of sustainable development, TechGig.com, in association with Vigyanlabs Innovations and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), recently organised a panel discussion with a focus on: ‘How technology can foster the corporate green agenda’.
Earth Hour, a WWF’s global campaign inspiring governments, businesses, communities and individuals to take a stand against climate change, was one of the key focal points of this discussion. The discussion witnessed the presence of many industry leaders and technology visionaries, representing an array of industries, highlighting the various green initiatives undertaken by them as well as the challenges associated with implementing them. The panellists included, Daya Prakash, CIO, LG, Samiron Ghoshal, Partner and Head – IT Advisory Services, Ernst & Young, Ramnik Kohli, Vice President – Sales & Marketing, EAFT Technologies,  Ravish Jhala, Corporate Head – IT, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, SK Wali, Head-CSR Projects, JK Organisations, Anil Veer, VP-IT, Aricent Technologies, Dharanibalan Gurunathan, Executive, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM, India/South Asia, Srinivas Varadarajan, CEO, Vigyanlabs Innovations and Neha Simlai, Manager – Communications for Business and Sustainability, WWF.
Talking about the importance of green agenda in his organisation, SK Wali, Head-CSR Projects, JK Organisation stated, “Green means to deliver a product which utilizes less energy and recycle the product which is not used by the people. This might have been driven by the systems of getting more profitable figures, but now, along with the profitability, we see it’s giving huge dividends in terms of actually operating our manufacturing units. We are becoming more and more efficient across all domains. So, for us, green means to sustain our manufacturing base for a longer period.”
He also highlighted that they have started using silica based products instead of carbon black for making eco-friendly green tyres, which are already being used on roads.
Anil Veer, VP-IT, Aricent Technologies, stated, “Green means to do more with less. When our company started expanding, we noticed that there were numerous data centres. In the last two years, we have started consolidating and have migrated five data centres into one. In the past two years we have consolidated 85% of our IT infrastructure servers to a virtual environment. So, for us, green also means effectively and efficiently consolidating to energy efficient devices.”
He also pointed out that, with offices all across the globe, employees utilise a large amount of resources while travelling and for inter-office collaboration. “We provide an environment where they can collaborate extensively using various audio and video conferencing mediums. This helps to bring down the travelling requirements tremendously.”
Stressing the significance of green agenda in his organisation, Dharanibalan Gurunathan, Executive, Offerings Management & Development, Global Technology Services, IBM, India/South Asia, stated that green for IBM is far beyond technology, it is religion. “In an Indian context, buildings contribute close to about 30% of energy consumption and that is one of the biggest challenges we have. So, one of the themes that we have embarked upon is start building a smarter planet, building by building.”
Talking about IBM’s future agenda in terms of promoting green, he added, “All our research is on cloud. All our development labs are on virtualised desktops. That is again cloud. We want to take this entire agenda with our clients as well, and make an impact. Our ex-chairman has made a commitment that by 2015 we would build a 7 billion $ cloud terminal. This is because every cloud initiative translates to energy saving.”
Ravish Jhala, Corporate Head – IT, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts highlighted that every employee of the organisation follows a set of green guidelines called the green ethos. “In all our properties that we have built, 25-30% of the total area is marked as the green zone. This means a lot in today’s business scenario as this space could be utilised for extra rooms or business inventories. We dedicate this space for tree plantation and landscaping and build an overall environment for the neighbourhood.”
“Most of our hotels are built as lead certified hotels. Both IT and engineering play a major role in terms of lead certification. Our hotel in Bangalore is one of the first hotels in the country to be awarded the energy conservation consistency award by the President in 2012. The complete focus has been given on energy saving, sustainability and environment,” he added.
Daya Prakash, CIO, LG, pointed out that most of their products are built keeping in mind the energy efficiency agenda so as to ensure lesser consumption of energy while the product is being used.
Understanding the need to cut down on paper wastage during the office documentation process, he also pointed out that in his organisation, the complete workflow management and documentation has been IT-enabled. This has considerably helped them to bring down the wastage of paper as well as the time requirement of the approval cycles.
Ramnik Kohli, Vice President – Sales & Marketing, EAFT Technologies, stated, “As an organisation, our first focus towards going green is going paperless. We are offering our clients paperless solutions. We have partnered with various top institutions of India wherein, they would be distributing tablets among students to cut down the paper usage. Also, the whole courseware would be bundled through that. “
According to Samiron Ghoshal, Partner and Head – IT Advisory Services, Ernst & Young, from an end user perspective there are few pointers of how an industry looks at the whole green initiative. Bottom-line is paramount. Every entrepreneur looks at the bottom-line. Secondly, green agenda adds to the brand value and visibility, especially with the younger generation.
Srinivas Varadarajan, CEO, Vigyanlabs Innovations, stated, “While building intelligent power management solutions across industries, we found that awareness regarding what consumes how much of power in still lacking in most industries. People have to be made aware of how much power is consumed.”
Talking about their future agenda, Varadarajan stated, “We are going to come out with more and more energy efficient products and at the same time create more awareness and help people reap the benefits of energy savings in terms of ROI.”
Neha Simlai, Manager – Communications for Business and Sustainability, WWF, stated, “In terms of what we do on a daily basis, it is critical for organisations like us to engage with businesses on a more direct level. It’s necessary at this point for WWF as an organisation to leverage its position with businesses. But having said that, a lot of the NGO space, fortunately or unfortunately, runs on emotional movements and I don’t think we can break away from them at this point. Especially, given the general level of awareness in India and abroad as well.”