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Our expert, Malavika Bambawale, Managing Director, Sustainability Solutions – APAC, joined the Singapore Business Review to discuss how businesses in the Asia Pacific region can clear the hurdles to decarbonization. "Decarbonization needs to be part of every company’s long-term strategy that increases value for their customers and employees. Companies need to make a business case around the cost-optimal roadmap that helps improve value for their stakeholders", she said in the interview.
Transcript has been edited for clarity
Interviewer: Today, we'll be talking about the whitepaper entitled How Businesses Can Clear the Hurdles to Decarbonization in the Asia Pacific Region? Before we begin, can you an overview of this whitepaper?
Malavika Bambawale: We're trying to help our clients implement decarbonization. What has happened so far in the world is that there's a clear understanding that now decarbonization needs to be done and that we need to get to Net Zero. But, it's really hard for companies to actually implement Net Zero. We're finding that companies are struggling when it comes to execution and there are many reasons for that. Primarily, there's a disconnect between the C-level of the company saying this needs to be done, but the executive level failing to understand what needs to happen and whether the different levers are in place to actually make that happen. We've written a whitepaper that hopefully provides some direction on the most likely hurdles to Net Zero.
How Businesses Can Clear The Hurdles To Decarbonization In APAC? Read More.
Interviewer: Can you name some of the challenges you've seen?
Malavika Bambawale: There are a couple of key questions that we highlight in this paper. The first one is uncertainty about how to get started and what technologies to use. How do you create a plan that really helps you understand how to get to Net Zero? What kind of business case does that plan have? There are all these new technologies that need to be adopted, but how mature are they? How much investment will it take to actually make that technology come to life? Who are the ecosystem partners that are available to work with us? What does that mean from the stakeholder's point of view? Are they willing to make those investments with you? How do you actually create a plan that is, as I mentioned, investment grade?
There's another hurdle around the limited renewable sourcing options in APAC. We're talking about a very fragmented market of different regulations. How do you actually purchase renewable energy? How you source this energy to fuel your operations is easier said than done.
