This year 22nd April will mark 50 years of Earth Day and 50 years of creating awareness to avert climate change. Aptly, the theme for Earth Day 2020 is climate action. The enormous challenge — but also the vast opportunities — of action on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary.

Earth Day was a unified response to an environment in crisis — oil spills, smog, rivers so polluted they literally caught fire. The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement, and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event. This day in 1970 marks the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States like The Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts, as well as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many countries soon adopted similar laws.

Earth Day continues to hold major international significance: In 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day when the historic Paris Agreement on climate change was signed into force. Based on the Nationally Determined Contributions for India, the target for steel industry is 2.5 tons of CO2 per tonne of crude steel (tCO2/tcs) produced by 2020 and 2.0 tCO2/tcs by 2030. Thus there is growing demand for adoption of energy efficient practices as well as carbon reducing technologies. This change would not only help steel producing units to adhere to their limited CO2 emissions but also be economically beneficial in the long run as the Carbon Pricing is around the corner. The net CO2 emission of India in 2018 was 2,299 million tonnes of carbon dioxide out of which JSW Steel contributed 44 million tonnes. Though our contributions accounts for only 1.9% of the total, but just to bring in some perspective, India contributed 7% to the global carbon dioxide burden and stands as the third largest CO2 emitter.

Being among the leading steel producing companies of India it is our responsibility to focus on abatement of our net CO2 emissions. JSW has taken the following actions to cut down its CO2 emissions.

• Adoption of Best Available Technologies - JSW Steel in all its plants has adopted the best available technologies practiced all around the world to increase energy efficiency and reduce raw material consumption, which ultimately serves the purpose of CO2 emissions reduction.
   
• Supporting Innovative Technologies - JSW has successfully reduced a lot of its emissions due to transportation of Iron ore by setting up pipe conveyor right from the mines to the Vijaynagar Plant.

• JSW is also a part of World Steel Association Climate Action Program. JSW in order to maintain a transparent CO2 emission database discloses information related to its carbon emissions under various initiatives such as Carbon Disclosure Program (CDP) and Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), along with public disclosure in the annual integrated report. JSW is the convener of the CII Working Group for Green House Gas (GHG) data collection from Industrial Processes and Product Use (IPPU) sectors for Iron & Steel and Cement. The working group consists of representatives from different companies in India and advises the Climate Change Council on relevant information about GHG accounting in the sectors, helps identify key challenges related to data collection and guides to develop a roadmap to address the identified challenges.

• Apart from these JSW is currently working on setting up long term targets of emissions which will act as guide to measure the progress of the company in achieving emission abatement. JSW is also planning to set up internal carbon pricing to incentivize CO2 emissions reduction targets.

Earth Day 2020 will be far more than a day. It must be a historic moment when citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that we need to meet our climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future.