Why in news?

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ annual Carbon Zero Challenge 2022 competition will focus on sustainability innovations and eco ventures.

Highlights:

• The competition aims to encourage contestants to think entrepreneurship and sustainability. A start-up seed grant and funding for prototypes and training to develop market ready ventures will be provided to shortlisted teams.
• Winners will receive ₹10 lakh as start-up seed grant and access to the institute’s incubation resources and angel and venture capitalist funding.
• The institute planned to establish a “School of Sustainability” and the CZC2022 would give a feel of challenges and technology needs that would enable to target research, course curriculum and other activities to meet the SDGs.
• Solutions should have low carbon, water and eco footprint and have a large societal impact, she said. Solutions could be deep technology, a new business model or an app-based inventory, including either individually or a combination of IT, IoT, AI, data analysis and a new policy intervention.
• The all-India eco-innovation and entrepreneurship competition aims to accelerate the lab-to-market transition of eco-innovations in India by funding innovations from proof-of-concept, lab-scale solutions to working prototypes or pilot

WHY DO WE NEED A CARBON ZERO CHALLENGE?

• Asia will have more than 1 billion vehicles by 2035 with as much as 80 per cent of air pollution in Asia’s cities being attributable to transport sector, according to reports by Asian Development Bank (ADB).

THEME, PURPOSE, MAIN FOCUS AREAS

• The Theme for CZC 2022 is CZC for ‘CRC’ (or) ‘Circularity in Resources Conservation.’
• The idea is to highlight the need to balance demand and earth’s supply through resource conservation, rethinking design and materials to enable reduction, recycling, recovery and reuse of resources.

KEY ASPECTS OF CARBON ZERO CHALLENGE

• Wider range of solutions: Solutions to sustainability challenges can be deep technology, a new business model, a new app-based inventory, IT /IOT/AI and data analysis, a new policy intervention, or a combination of the four.
• Faculty-led/research scientist-led teams: Faculty initiation and involvement are key to sustaining the momentum and continuing the journey to higher TRLs and Incubating Start-ups.

• Focus on commercialisation of research: CZC will invest in developing the “go-to-market capabilities” of the selected teams and expect the teams to develop their alignment and relevance to the marketplace.