Tamil Nadu is confident of achieving carbon neutrality well ahead of India’s 2070 net-zero target, with the State laying the groundwork for a transition to net zero based on a 2019 greenhouse-gas emissions baseline aligned with IPCC guidelines.

 

Bakan Jagdish Sudhakar, CEO, Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company, said the state was now translating the baseline into a clear transition pathway towards net zero while delivering the Keynote Address at the CII Tamil Nadu Sustainable Manufacturing Summit 2026 in Chennai, themed “Driving Industrial Excellence through Sustainability.”

 

Outlining the State’s decarbonisation push, he said, “Tamil Nadu was working on decarbonisation plans for four districts and had initiated a Rs. 1,000-crore Green Climate Fund, with an initial Rs. 100-crore commitment from the State Government and the remaining corpus proposed to be raised from the market, to support businesses in areas including energy transition, circular economy and recycling,”.

 

The state has also launched passive-cooling guidelines for buildings, a move that could cut energy demand by around 30% over the lifetime of a building. The measures require an incremental construction investment of about Rs. 300 per square metre but could deliver a return on investment in less than three years.

 

Muthu C, Chairman, CII Tamil Nadu Sustainable Manufacturing Summit Taskforce & President and Chief of Operations, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt Ltd, said the Summit aimed to shift sustainability from a discussion centred on commitments to one focused on implementation and measurable business value.

 

Sustainability, he said, should no longer be treated as a standalone ESG or compliance exercise. Instead, it must be embedded into manufacturing operations to identify waste across energy, water, materials and other resources, while improving efficiency and cutting costs.

 

Ravichandran Purushothaman, Chairman, CII Southern Region & President, Danfoss India, highlighted CII’s work through its Centres of Excellence in green buildings, energy efficiency, water management and sustainability. He said businesses increasingly needed to measure both direct and indirect carbon emissions and deploy available technologies, skills and financing mechanisms to steadily reduce their carbon footprint.

 

J Murugavel, Vice Chairman, CII Tamil Nadu State Council & Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Matrimony.com, said Tamil Nadu’s broad industrial base — spanning automobiles, engineering, electronics, textiles, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy and emerging technologies — gave the State a strong platform for its next phase of growth.

 

He stressed that economic expansion could no longer be separated from ecological sustainability, with the quality of future growth increasingly dependent on how sustainably and competitively industries expand.

 

At the session titled “The Next Industrial Revolution: Manufacturing in a Carbon-Constrained World,” Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Institute Professor, IIT Madras & Chairman, Immersive Technology and Entrepreneurship Labs, called on Indian industry to make climate-change technology a core innovation priority.

 

He said India should build leadership in developing climate solutions rather than wait for technologies to emerge elsewhere. Green technologies, he stressed, would achieve scale only when they became commercially viable, making stronger collaboration among startups, scientists, academia and industry essential to developing and scaling climate technologies.