TCS APAC achieves net zero emissions ahead of 2025 target

Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has achieved net zero emissions across its Asia Pacific locations, ahead of its 2030 target, a senior executive told ET.

Last year, the company announced plans to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 70% by 2025 (over the 2016 base year), and to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

India’s largest IT services provider by revenue is working on a three-pronged strategy in the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) solutions space, Girish Ramachandran, president of TCS APAC, said.


These include solutions to track carbon footprint for customers, improve individual resource consumption patterns and outcome-based digital solutions for customers that help reduce carbon emissions, Ramachandran added.

TCS’ digital sustainability index report, launched last week, revealed that over 87% of enterprises believe that digital sustainability can deliver a competitive advantage to businesses.

“Last year, we said we will take two markets and two delivery centres outside India and make them carbon neutral by 2025 in Asia Pacific. In FY22, all of TCS APAC became carbon neutral, ahead of our stated target,” Ramachandran said.

The initial markets chosen for this initiative were Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. However, as of FY22, TCS achieved the target by reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission to zero across four delivery centres and 26 locations (offices) spanning 12 countries.

“After we computed our carbon footprint, we looked at whether we could get our energy from renewable sources, ensuring that our water or any other utilities are also carbon neutral along with a significant amount of recycling. When we went through this exercise, we realized that there is an opportunity for us to also take our customers through this same journey, because everybody is looking for these solutions,” he added.

TCS is currently working with the UN Global Compact to pilot a carbon footprint management tool for enterprise customers across Europe and APAC. UN is connecting TCS to target customers for this initiative, Ramachandran said.

ESG Strategy
“ESG conversations are elevated more and more towards CEOs and Boards. Our survey found that most organizations around Asia Pacific are saying that they want to spend at least 1% of their annual turnover on digital sustainability, which is a big number,” he said.

The company has an existing suite of sustainability solutions consisting of TCS Clever Energy Intelligent Power Plant (IP2) and TCS Envirozone that help organizations gain insights into energy usage and reduce waste and emissions to accelerate towards their net-zero goals.

ET reported previously that TCS had started working on these solutions for in-house needs in 2014 and began offering it to clients three years ago after witnessing massive savings across its India offices.

The company has also introduced a Circle4Life app within its employee base in recent weeks to help individuals track and reduce their carbon footprint.

Ramachandran said capital expenditure in digital ESG solutions initially go up before companies start seeing the economic benefits.

“The fact that organizations see that they are working with the company that is environmentally and socially conscious also boosts the morale of employees, specifically, as most of our own employees are Gen Y and Gen Z,” he added.