As global regulatory pressures and climate risks reshape international markets, businesses can no longer treat sustainability as a compliance tick-box. In this high-impact episode of The CleanCarbon Podcast, climate journalist Mr. Shubham Thakur sits down with Mr. Gaurav Sarup, Chief Sustainability Officer at Vedanta Group, to explore how modern enterprises are executing the green transition.
Mr. Gaurav Sarup shares executive-level insights on how hard-to-abate sectors are placing carbon management systems at the heart of their business models, balancing return on investment (ROI) in decarbonisation, and leveraging carbon markets to accelerate low-carbon economic progress. Discover how forward-thinking corporations are connecting climate action with core business growth to transform sustainability reporting into a powerful commercial competitive advantage.
Key Points from Vedanta's Chief Sustainability Officer Gaurav Sarup on The CleanCarbon Podcast
1. Integrating Sustainability in Hard-to-Abate Sectors:
How heavy industries are overcoming operational hurdles to embed decarbonization at their core.
2. The Economics of Decarbonisation:
Measuring the true return on investment (ROI) in corporate sustainability initiatives and carbon management infrastructure.
3. The Role of Carbon Markets:
Accelerating low-carbon economic progress through strategic carbon market participation.
4. Turning Compliance into Advantage:
How major businesses leverage transparent sustainability reporting to secure market leadership and stakeholder trust.
The CleanCarbon Podcast
Mr. Shubham Thakur: Hello and welcome to this very interesting podcast. I am Shubham Thakur, climate journalist and CBAM expert at CleanCarbon.ai, which is a platform that helps in CBAM compliance and sustainability reporting. I have been in this domain for the past three, four, five years, and I’ve been writing and talking to multiple experts on climate change, trying to understand how climate change is impacting businesses and economy.
Under that effort of mine to understand how it is reshaping businesses, today I have a very interesting guest on the show, Mr. Gaurav Sarup, Chief Sustainability Officer at Vedanta. Sir comes with years of experience in sustainability reporting and understanding how businesses and climate change go hand-in-hand together. Thank you so much, sir, for speaking to me.
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: Thank you, Shubham. Thank you for inviting me, and we will keep this conversation as free as possible.
The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change on Heavy Industries
Mr. Shubham Thakur: Sir, I’ve been working in this domain for the past two and a half to three years. Before this, I was working as a climate journalist. Now, as I have worked for some time in this industry, I have started to understand that climate change is not just about global warming or irregular weather patterns. It is actually impacting our economy and the way we have been doing businesses in India and globally. Do you see such correlation between climate change and businesses? How is it impacting businesses?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: So let’s answer this question in two or three parts. Part one, is it impacting businesses? The answer is an unequivocal yes. How it’s impacting businesses depends on the industry that you’re in. So if you’re in the food industry, for example, climate change has a very real impact because it impacts weather, and weather impacts agricultural cycles. Therefore, all of your ingredients, food availability, and pricing are dependent on how the monsoon was in that particular year. When you come to an industry that I belong to, which is natural resources, metals, and mining, climate change has a very interesting impact when we look at the physical impacts. The impact really happens when we see government regulations start to change and when we see investors start to create new demands in their investment portfolios for investing in companies that are more sustainable and climate-friendly. Broadly, I would say climate change has direct and indirect impacts for certain industries, and that is where the conversation within the company of understanding where those impacts lie begins.
Navigating Corporate Readiness, Materiality, and the Green Transition
Mr. Shubham Thakur: As the world is becoming more climate-conscious, we have multiple policies in India and at the global level that ask for your climate impact, particularly for corporations. Do you think businesses are prepared for that climate-conscious economy and how are they viewing this entire transition?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: ‘Transition’ is the right word. Where we stand as society and corporates today is on a spectrum ranging from people who have just started to become aware to those who have been engaging on the subject for multiple years, some even decades. As a global company, Vedanta has been talking about sustainability as a whole since 2012, which has allowed us to understand what each topic of sustainability means for our business. There is a concept called ‘materiality’ in the world of sustainability; the first step is to understand the materiality of those subjects for your own business. Transition never goes smoothly; there is always an upcycle and a downcycle. Take the example of renewable energy—10-15 years ago, it was a ‘nice to have,’ but today, it is one of the mainstays of the energy economy. If you push the conversation to the next decade, it will be about battery storage, hydrogen, and perhaps other forms of renewable energy. Something that was not commercially or technically feasible five years ago might make perfect sense today.
The Role of ESG Frameworks (BRSR & GRI) in Business Measurement
Mr. Shubham Thakur: Don’t you think more and more businesses are still focused on looking at sustainability or climate transition from the lens of ESG reporting or CSR projects? Is it just that or is it beyond that?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: It begins there, although the core philosophy of sustainability reporting was meant to be the last thing you do. You understand materiality, figure out how to measure impacts, create strategies, management plans, and targets, and once that is in your business DNA, then you report. Companies have gone the other way, and there is a logical reason: businesses understand the world through profit and loss statements and financial numbers. Sustainability reporting, such as GRI or BRSR, breaks problems down into specific indicators like Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, lost time injury rates, or the number of women in the leadership team. The adage is ‘what gets measured gets managed.’ Sustainability reporting allowed businesses to start to understand what this vast topic breaks down into.
Evaluating the Financial Return & Business ROI of Sustainability
Mr. Shubham Thakur: What is the ROI of sustainability? Does ensuring your company is green give you a financial return in the long term?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: There is no clear answer, and perhaps that’s been the struggle of our profession. What is the ROI of ensuring no life is lost? What is the ROI of community trust? What is the ROI of recording emissions when there is no regulatory regime that requires it? I don’t think you can begin this conversation by asking about ROI, as those take time to emerge. What it does is give a company a very different vantage point. If my operations are running efficiently, my emissions for the same gigajoule of energy produced would be lower. It’s those kind of insights that sustainability reporting has the potential of giving.
Elevating Climate Risk & Decarbonization to Boardroom Discussions
Mr. Shubham Thakur: Do these sustainability aspects have value in boardroom discussions, not just associated with profitability?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: Increasing those conversations are finding their way into the boardroom. If I have to expand my plant from 1 million tons per annum to 2 million, the conversation will 100% be held on whether I should deploy renewable energy. By heading in this direction, companies are starting to realize intangible competitive advantages: access to more investors, government officials being more open to having your business in their area, and engaging with better business partners. The goal is that eventually, there should not be a ‘Sustainability Officer’—the CFO should incorporate climate risks and the COO should consider climate-friendly solutions automatically.
Regulatory Catalysts (CBAM, CCTS) and Post-COVID Climate Resiliency
Mr. Shubham Thakur: What dramatically changed in the last five years? We have policies like CBAM or CCTS in India. Are these driving the change?
Mr. Gaurav Sarup: I look at the initial years around COVID as a time when people started reflecting on their relationship with the environment. Business-wise, we saw supply chain breakdowns due to the virus, and the same conversation applies to climate change. When we hit the 1.5° mark, the kind of disruptions anticipated are going to create similar, if not larger, challenges. Investors want to know if their money is resilient. All of that money now has to understand there is this other thing in the room which might cause disruption we’ve not imagined—climate risk.