Wipro, HCL score high in Greenpeace Cool IT Leaderboard

BANGALORE, INDIA: Leading Indian IT brands Wipro and HCL scored high points for advocating for a higher share of renewable energy in India according to an annual ranking release globally by Greenpeace international.

This is an important development in context of the recently released report by Greenpeace India which points out that most of the Indian states have failed to achieve their renewable energy targets.

Global technology giants, Cisco and Google are leading the technology sector in providing innovative energy solutions that can help address climate change said greenpeace and further added Ericsson came in at third place in the analysis followed by Fujitsu in the fourth place.

Wipro ranked 5th along with Sprint and HP while HCL ranked 13th in the global IT-sector climate leadership assessment which evaluates 21 global IT and telecom firms on their leadership in three main areas:

* the companies' offerings of IT solutions to reduce energy demand across the economy;

* their management of their own energy footprints;

* and whether they use their influence to advocate for government policies that encourage the adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Both Indian companies have risen in their ranking from the previous version, Wipro jumps 6 positions while HCL moves 3 positions upward.

"It is heartening to see that large IT companies like Wipro and HCL are advocating for clean energy development," said Greenpeace India senior campaigner Abhishek Pratap.

He added, "The thought leaders from these companies have taken the leading role and we do hope that slagging clean energy growth in the country will get big boost ensuring low carbon economy pathway for the country."

This year's assessment finds that companies have continued to make progress in establishing the sector's key role in enabling a renewably powered economy, as more companies increased their own commitment to renewable energy.

Wipro strongly advocated for higher Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) target in the range of 15-20 percent, a critical policy driver for renewable energy in the country and for more aggressive National Solar Mission target, added Greenpeace.

HCL also advocated for a significantly higher share of renewable energy in India by strengthening current policy and regulatory mechanism on energy.

However, despite the IT sector's green ambitions, progress on clean energy development has been blocked by skewed energy policy and related regulatory hurdles. Without addressing the policy and regulatory barriers, technology companies will not be able to unleash their hallmark creative disruption in the energy sector.

"IT sector's progress will continue to be halted by policy and regulatory hurdles until more companies start demanding for a shift of policies towards clean energy development," concluded Pratap.