Govt launches Bharat Zero Emission Trucking policy advisory

Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Union government on Wednesday launched the advisory document titled 'Bharat Zero Emission Trucking (ZET) Policy Advisory' aimed at creating an ecosystem to speed up decarbonisation and help achieve India's ambitious Net Zero 2070 target.

In his opening address, Prof. Sood said: "The induction and wider adoption of ZETs require technical expertise and systematic policy interventions to create an enabling techno-socioeconomic ecosystem in India."

The Bharat ZET Policy Advisory document has been conceived as a dynamic document, outlining a comprehensive set of 30 policy interventions designed to accelerate ZET adoption in India.

These interventions are categorised into five key areas: incentives, regulations, infrastructure, business and financing, and stakeholder-centric initiatives.

Each policy intervention identifies a nodal agency responsible for implementation, a list of key stakeholders, its impact on the sector, and the methodology of policy formulation.

These recommendations will be further refined through extensive stakeholder consultations, including detailed cost-benefit and impact analyses by the concerned ministries, departments, and institutions.

Hanif Qureshi, Additional Secretary (Auto), Ministry of Heavy Industries and. Sudhendu Sinha, Adviser (Infrastructure Connectivity & E-Mobility), NITI Aayog also spoke on the occasion and highlighted the need for the electrification of trucks and discussed the way forward to fully transition to ZETs to reach 100 per cent ZET sales penetration by 2050, which is essential to achieve India's ambitious Net Zero 2070 target.

Prof. Karthick Athmanathan, Professor of Practice, IIT Madras set the context of the Bharat ZET Policy Advisory document and Ms Patki presented a brief overview of the document outlining the approach and methodology of arriving at the policy interventions.

The development of this advisory document was steered and guided by a Policy Advisory Panel constituted by the Office of the PSA. A Project Management Unit was established at CoEZET, IIT Madras to draft the policy advisory document under the guidance of the PAP.

The PAP is chaired by Dr. Preeti Banzal, Adviser, Office of PSA, and vice-chaired by Prof. Karthick Athmanathan, PSA Fellow.

The panel also included Dr. Reji Mathai, Director, Automotive Research Association of India; S.A. Sundaresan, Vice President and Head (New Technologies), Ashok Leyland Ltd.; Sushant Naik, Global Head of Government and Public Affairs, Tata Motors Ltd.; Pawan Mulukutla, Executive Program Director - Integrated Transport, Clean Air and Hydrogen, WRI India; D.M.R. Panda, General Manager-Hydrogen & Renewable Energy, NTPC; Prof. S.A. Soman, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay and Rajesh S, Chief Executive Officer, CoEZET, IIT Madras.

(With inputs from IANS)