Directors Kevin Houston and Som Narayan were in Delhi this week delivering a workshop organised by TAPAI and hosted by the Indian Government Department of Telecommunications. The workshop was on carbon footprinting methodologies for the Telecoms sector. India boasts the second largest telecoms sector in the world with 900 million subscribers. Rapid expansion in the sector has created a mobile telecoms infrastructure of 400,000 telecom towers, powered by a mixture of electricity, batteries and diesel. The diesel is used in generators to power the mobile phone masts in rural and remote areas where connection to the grid is absent or partial. This has resulted in carbon emissions totalling 16

million tonnes of CO₂e per annum. The telecoms regulator (TRAI) has now mandated the sector to begin measuring and reporting their carbon footprint and has set them targets for emission reductions annually till 2020.

The workshop delivered by Kevin and Som in Delhi was in response to the new TRAI regulations and discussed a piece of work Carbon Masters have been doing for American Tower Corporation (ATC), one of the telecoms infrastructure providers in India. Carbon Masters have been mapping the carbon footprint of a selection of ATC’s telecom towers to help the company meet the new regulations as well as identify potential opportunities for switching from diesel to renewables.

This is one of several carbon reduction projects Carbon Masters are currently involved with in India. A separate project in Bangalore, where the Carbon Masters India office is based, has involved co-ordinating the installation of solar roof panels on a large office building. This will reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, as well as potentially helping to protect the offices against power shortages.

Carbon Masters’ recent overseas success has been the topic of a large piece in today’s Herald, accessible here. Our experience so far has been

that UK expertise in carbon reduction strategies and technologies is highly sought-after in overseas markets. This is true even in countries like Ecuador where there is currently no legislative requirements for companies to measure and reduce their

emissions. We look forward to building on our recent successes in India and Ecuador

by setting up offices in

the US, where our market research has identified several potential opportunities, particularly in the grocery retail sector.