Towards Net Zero

As a society we are not moving fast enough to limit warming to the 1.5℃ threshold of the Paris agreement, the 1.5℃ threshold that the IPCC warned would mark the departure point towards increasingly devastating consequences.  But it is also clearer than ever from the science that every fraction of a degree matters and that therefore every action matters; restricting warming to 1.6℃ will be immeasurably better than allowing it reach 1.8℃.

With this in mind the time for action is now.

All businesses need to develop an ambitious and coherent climate plan, not only as a reaction to the ecological necessity, but also because it helps build resilience and long-term success. Looking at operations through the lens of emissions reduction can unearth efficiencies that reduce costs, having a credible strategy helps recruit and retain the best staff and increasingly a carbon reduction plan is a pre-qualification criteria for tenders and B2B opportunities.

The challenge for business is knowing what a credible plan looks like and how to deliver it.

At Net Zero Now we are exclusively focused on supporting organisations with the development of credible and coherent climate strategies, which are built around four key pillars, in an annual cycle: Calculate, Target, Act, and Communicate.

The challenge is that, despite the emergence of global best practice standards for Calculation (Carbon Accounting - GHG Protocol Corporate Standard) and Target Setting (Science Based Targets initiative) over the last 10 years, there remains lots of room for interpretation in the application of these guidelines to specific businesses and if we leave this interpretation up to individual businesses, we will inevitably end up with inconsistency and confusion.

The solution to this is a sector based approach: a sports club does not face the same problems as a hair salon, and a restaurant faces different challenges to a steel fabricator. But each one of these businesses faces the same challenges as other businesses like them in their sector, and would benefit from the application of a consistent approach within their sector.

With a sector based approach we are drawing together businesses that face the same interpretation challenges relating to calculation methodology and collectively answering those questions in a consistent way.

We are collectively looking at what reduction targets make most sense and agreeing a minimum required level for the sector.

And we are collectively considering actions that a business can take, so that we’re not leaving businesses to individually discover what their options are but surfacing those, and sharing them in free resources.

To do this we bring together the key partners in each sector (trade association, industry bodies, academics and major suppliers) as a steering group to develop a sector protocol and a climate action playbook. The documents are freely available and define what best practice means for businesses in that sector and the protocol provides a standard against which those that take action can be certified as being On the Road to Net Zero.

We use the process documented in the protocol to configure our intuitive platform on a sector by sector basis. The platform enables businesses to:

• Calculate their full value chain emissions in accordance with global best practice methodology (GHG Protocol Corporate Standard).
• Commit to near term and long term emissions reduction targets for Scope 1 & 2 and Scope 3, in alignment with global best practice (Science Based Targets initiative). 
• Formulate emissions reduction action to achieve the targets.
• Disclose impact data, targets and plans in accordance with national regulation and communicate to meet stakeholder expectation.

We have applied this approach and built industry endorsed solutions in eight different sectors over the last two years, with more in development, and now have c700,000 tons of carbon under management across over 3,000 sites.  

For more information visit www.netzeronow.org.