Before coming to India, I actually wasn’t sure about what to expect, since it is my first time here and so I decided not to have any pre-fixed expectations in order to simply experience once being here. However, I certainly believed that many people in India and surely the corporate sector would definitely not share the European view on climate change and sustainability. Thus, I was positively surprised when hearing the exact project outline to assess possibilities to reduce Tata Capital’s carbon emissions and make their offices more environmentally friendly.

When I talked to my friends at university about my summer plans to go to India to help Tata reduce its carbon emissions, I received some surprised, but also sceptical comments, which could be summed up in:

‘Good luck with reducing carbon emissions in India. Firstly, you should think about making up for your own emissions from a 20,000 km long return flight - about 1015kg CO2!’

As I would personally agree to a very large extend with this comment, it has motivated me for the internship and really made me passionate about finding ways how to reduce Tata’s environmental impact. Although it remains disputable if I’ll really manage to neutralize my CO2-emissions from the flight within the remaining 5 weeks, I will surely try and seek to assist Tata in finding new ideas for long-term reduction of their carbon emissions within the company.

So far, after the first half of the internship, I am very positively surprised by the initiatives already taken by Tata. Carbon footprint analyses have been conducted and the key sectors for CO2-reductions have been identified. I also feel that my colleagues at Tata are extremely passionate themselves about the topic and are willing to push the ideas further, which makes me optimistic about its entire environmental initiative. A lot of convincing still needs to be done, but I am more than confident that this initiative will develop successfully.