Theme of Carbon Zero Challenge

The biggest challenge humanity faces is meeting the growing demands with limited resources and to be achieved within the constraints of reduced carbon and water footprint. We have begun to realize that the conventional linear flow of resources is no longer sustainable and more circular economy solutions are the need of the hour. To achieve Net Zero targets, we should have a holistic outlook. The current focus is on reducing the embodied energy, carbon, and water footprint of our production processes, transport processes, and during the active product life. But there is less attention paid to recovery and recycling at end of life to close the loop. This has been primarily due to the high costs required for justifying the recovery and for low (or even zero) penalties for damaging the environment. The benefits are immense in terms of ecological footprint and reduced burden on earth if low-cost / energy/carbon solutions are found to address this gap.

Resource Depletion accelerated by the triple planetary crises climate change, pollution and Biodiversity loss are the biggest challenge facing the world. Earth overshoot day when we exhaust our annual budget for natural resources fell on July 28th and we need 1.75 earths to sustain our consumption. World needs low carbonfoot print, low water footprint, low polluting, technology to enable us to  balance our demand and earth’s supply through resource conservation, rethinking design and materials to enable  reduction, recycling , recovery and reuse of resources. 

Circularity refers to  Resource Reduction, Reuse, Recycle and Recovery as a theme that cuts across multiple areas such as Materials, Water, Air, Land, and Energy across multiple sectors Urban, Rural and Industry.The circular economy is a systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution.

CZC 2018 and 2019 editions were broad in scope targeting a variety of innovation ideas in five thematic areas: Urban infrastructure, Agriculture, Transport, Water, and Energy.  Herein, we provide a brief background on the theme, the contest objectives, and the approach. CZC 2022 builds on our experience from the two iterations of the contest in 2018 and 2019.