Experts laid stress on research for developing technically, environmentally and economically feasible technologies to capture and utilise CO2 (carbon dioxide) during a two-day international conference on net-zero emission technologies for sustainable development at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad in Jharkhand recently.

Faculties, students, researchers and industry professionals from across the country who congregated at the tech cradle discussed ways of attaining net-zero emission for sustainable development, challenges and opportunities.

Senior executives of various industries, including the energy sector, stressed the need for innovation in technologies that decarbonise conventional resource use while controlling fresh emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere for achieving net-zero emissions.

Net zero refers to achieving a balance between the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and its removal from the atmosphere. It also means cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible.

Executive director (engineering) of NTPC Ltd, Manish Kumar Srivastava, said: “We are on the brink of a global disaster and for this disaster, we ourselves are to blame. Today is the time when if we do not act, we are definitely in the face of being extinct and the situation is so critical that we don’t have sufficient time.”

“All of us have joined here for only one purpose and that is to find the solution and technologies that would help us to mitigate the problems we are facing now and to give us a better place to live in,” elaborated Srivastava and expressed hope that the conference will help in this regard.

Asit Das, head of refining research and development, Reliance Industries Ltd, said: “Carbon dioxide emission has emerged as a global problem or rather a gigatonne problem as we are emitting carbon in gigatonnes and have emitted around 36.7 gigatonnes of CO2 in the last year.”