Opportunity, Challenges, and Options for Decarburization of Huge Transport Fleet in Major Indian Organization

Abstract

To combat climate change, the world is witnessing a rapid transition phase from fossil fuels to renewables. In this transition, India’s aspiration to emerge as a climate leader by declaring ambitious nationally determined contributions and spearheading climate negotiations as a leader of developing countries is praiseworthy and should be complemented by a significant energy transition by all governments, semigovernments, and corporates. The major government organizations, such as railways and the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), have declared a road map for achieving carbon neutrality. This situation compels the Indian armed forces to think in what manner their climate-positive actions could reduce their carbon footprint, which could help in accelerating carbon neutrality in India. This paper critically highlights the transition measures that are being adopted by leading world militaries and studies the feasibility of the decarbonization of military transport in the Indian scenario. In addition, without touching on any sensitive security issues, it broadly evaluates emissions from the military transport sector using an econometric approach. This paper further evaluates the feasibility of energy transition in the transportation sector using cost–benefit (CBA) and multicriteria analyses (MCA). The findings of this paper indicate that hydrogen fuel cell technology presents a more viable, environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective option for the Indian military’s decarbonization efforts compared with electric vehicles (EVs). This conclusion is drawn based on the proposed green technologies, CBA, and MCA.