Greenpeace activists today gathered outside Bharti Airtel’s headquarters in Gurgaon, following the telecom leader’s failure to respond substantively to specific questions pertaining to reduction in its carbon emissions and shifting to renewable sources of energy to power its network operations, inspite of repeated requests.
The activists displayed the sign “Switch off Diesel” at the company headquarters as a reminder of the demand made on the leader to shift. Close to 50, 000 supporters have already signed a petition asking Airtel to go clean.
Greenpeace representative had a meeting with Bharti Airtel’s representative on the above demand after the demonstration today.
Though the telecom giant has agreed to meet and discuss the issue, they are still non-committal on the demand.
Earlier Greenpeace released its report “Dirty Talking- Case for telecom to shift to renewable”, which exposed how the subsidy on diesel has been aggressively exploited by the telecom sector, resulting in an annual loss of around Rs 2600 crore to the state exchequer.
However, the report also shows how the sector can become a transformative force by adopting renewable energy for their business operations and advocating for economy wide climate and energy solutions.
Greenpeace has been demanding Airtel to
· Publicly disclosing the carbon emissions of its entire business operation and establish progressive emission reduction targets
· Commit to shift the sourcing of 50% of its energy requirements towards renewable energy sources and phase out diesel use in its business operations by 2015
· Catalyse a low-carbon economy wide growth, by using its brand power to advocate for strong policies that promote renewable energy.
