The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), and the India Chapter of the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA-India) are engaged in developing the ‘2050 net-zero Roadmap of the Indian Cement and Concrete Sector”. Since the stakeholder engagement is a useful exercise to corroborate the findings of CO2 reduction levers in the tool used to develop the roadmap, the TERI team has conducted a number of meetings with a number of experts in the industries.
As a part of this exercise the TERI team held a virtual meeting with Mr Vijaykumar Kulkarni, Director-LCCF on August 4th, 2022. Later, LCCF was invited to participate in a seminar organized jointly by TERI and GCCA-India on October 12th, 2022 in Mumbai when over 70 experts from the cement and concrete industries participated in a day-long events.
The multi-stakeholder roundtable provided valuable insights to identify rigorous pathways to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Most discussed topics spanned a range of aspects such as the availability and accessibility of SCMs, supporting policy to enhance the use of AFR, performance monitoring of CO2 emission in building constructions and infrastructure, green building codes, and access to CCUS technology and cost, etc.
Lecture for Post-Graduate Students of SPCE, Mumbai
The Department of Civil Engineering of the Sardar Patel College of Engineering (SPCE) organized a lecture by Er Vijay Kulkarni on November 17th, 2022 for their students undergoing post-graduate studies. The topic of the lecture was “Climate Change and Role of Civil Engineers”.
Around 50 students attended the lecture. Prof Dr A R Kambekar, Prof Tanuja Bandivadekar and other faculty members were also present during the lecture.
The lecture was followed by a question-answer session. The students and faculties showed considerable interest in the subject.
LCCF participates in the Workshop on ‘Design and Construction of Short and Medium Span Concrete Bridges’
Er. Vijay Kulkarni, Director-LCCF spoke in the session on August 20th, 2022 on the theme “Brace-up for Net Zero Carbon – ACT from now Onwards”. After highlighting the dangers of climate change and need to mitigate the carbon emissions, Er Kulkarni spoke on how to reduce the operational and embodied carbon. He also underlined the importance of enhancing durability and service life of bridges. The urgent need to conduct benchmarking survey of the embodied carbon of the existing road and rail bridges in India was stressed.
The session was followed by a brief panel discussion during which Er. V N Heggade, Er Sandeep Pattiwar, Er. Alok Bhowmick and Prof Mahesh Tandon shared their views on the topic.
LCCF takes part in Training Program on ‘Environmental Engineering and Sustainability’
LCCF Directors participated in the five-day Short Term Training Programme on “Environment Engineering for Global Sustainability” held on August 1st to 5th, 2022 in Mumbai. The program was attended by faculty members from different diploma and degree engineering colleges from Maharashtra State. The objective of the program was to create awareness on topics such as climate change, environmental pollution, flooding, design for sustainability, etc.
Presentations were made on the following topics by LCCF Directors in this program:
- Net Zero 2070: Role of Civil and Structural Engineers” by Vijay Kulkarni, and
- Climate Change and Urban Flooding by Dr Vinay Nikam
Around 120 academicians attended this program. LCCF presentations received “Excellent” to “Very Good” rating from the participants.
LCCF conducts Two Online Awareness Programmes
Event organized by the Indian Concrete Institute and Alccotech at Panji, Goa on May 28th, 2022
Event: Lecture for Engineers from L&T at Khandala on April 26th, 2022
One of the important missions of Low Carbon Construct Forum (LCCF) is to create awareness about the dangers of Climate Change and how the reduction in the emission of carbon dioxide from buildings and construction sectors can mitigate the adverse effects of the Climate-centric disasters.
In line with this mission, LCCF recently conducted two virtual programmes.
The first programme, conducted on December 1st, 2021, was for the middle and senior management personnel from Heidelberg Cement India Ltd.”
The second programme was for the faculty members from civil engineering branches of various colleges under the AICTE-ISTE sponsored Induction/Refresher programme. This programme was held on January 3rd, 2022 and was attended by around 50 participants.
During both the above programmes, Mr. Vijay Kulkarni spoke on how to make sweeping reductions of carbon from the built-environment. This was followed by brief question and answer sessions, during which there was a healthy discussion on some key topics.