Over 22,000 customers ask Airtel to go green

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Within 24 hours of Greenpeace’s online initiative, more than 22,000 customers across India recently joined the public campaign asking telecom giant Bharti-Airtel to go clean by shifting the powering of the company’s network towers to renewable energy.

The public campaign follows the release of Greenpeace’s report 'Dirty Talking -Case for telcom industry to shift from diesel 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, said a press release.

The report also highlights the immense cost and energy savings the industry could accrue through such a shift.

“Airtel is one of the biggest customers of subsidised diesel. As the market leader in India and a dominant telecom force globally, it’s high time Airtel connected India and millions of their users through renewable energy, not dirty diesel. The company should make a commitment to phase out diesel and switch to renewable energy and show the rest of the telecom sector that it can be done” said Mrinmoy Chattaraj, climate and energy campaigner, Greenpeace India.

Shift 50 p.c energy requirements to renewable energy

Greenpeace’s campaign asks Airtel to act in line with its professed environmental commitments by publicly disclosing the carbon emissions of its entire business operation and establish progressive emission reduction targets and commit to shift the sourcing of its energy requirements 50 p.c towards renewable energy sources and phase out diesel use in its business operations by 2015, added the release.

The campaign also asks Airtel to catalyse a low-carbon economy wide growth, by using its brand power to advocate for strong policies that promote renewable energy.