Corporate Strategies for Sustainable Energy Transition

For the last few decades, climate action has emphasised regulatory policies to reduce carbon emissions intensity and promote renewable energy consumption generated through primary renewable energy sources. Global energy transition at a phenomenal scale is underway. Global businesses' corporate powerhouses have started aligning their energy strategies with climate change by transitioning to more sustainable energy procurement approaches. Most of the business world has recently been stepping toward sustainable energy solutions like RE100 initiatives and on-site and off-site renewable energy. Moreover, companies also motivate to install renewable energy by adding supply chain procurement solicitations. Large-scale adoption of renewable energy may improve energy sustainability and assist in handling the potential problems of climate change. Contrary to the general belief, energy procurement or production costs may not increase when power generation systems move to sustainable ones. This is mainly because of the shift from the costly opex model of coal, oil, and gas plants to a new upfront capex model of renewable energy, where the low operational cost will reduce the overall cost of energy at the same time while helping the corporates to reach the net zero targets faster. Apart from this, the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) and Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) are emerging as a new mechanisms to target minimum emissions. The REC is a third-party voluntary program that mitigates environmental compliance criteria by ensuring renewable energy products or projects. It also allows the corporate sector or companies to accurately interconnect their procurement with stakeholders or customers. These rising renewable energy sources can reduce global warming and slow the climate crisis. The government of India launched the REC mechanism in 2010-2011, but the Appellate Tribunal suspended it for Electricity in July 2020. Recently, the Ministry of Power has proposed the redesign of REC to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) in 2021 to achieve the renewable energy targets under the Paris Agreement for 2030.