Net Zero – The Transformation the World Needs

Over the last decade, the world has been swept by the ‘net zero’ or ‘net positive’ revolution. In 2019 India and most parts of the world sweltered in a record heatwave, climate scientists' warnings are finally being paid attention to , 15 year old Greta Thunberg said it like it is and got over a million school children to protest against climate inaction, climate change is fast emerging as one of the prominent points of global political discussion and unexpectedly and collective action towards emissions reductions is now taken more seriously than ever.

These trends have trickled down to the consumer base as a report published by Accenture Strategy strongly indicates that 63 per cent of consumers prefer to buy from firms that stand for a purpose that reflects their personal values, scrapping those that don’t.

Whether we like it or not the GHG reduction process is here to stay. It is the silent but steady revolution that is set to impact all the sectors across the globe. With political and corporate leaders realizing the sheer gravity of the situation at hand, a resilient net positive world suddenly looks more achievable than ever before.

How?

A successful GHG reduction business strategy requires detailed and careful analysis. It is a global revolution that is taking the corporate sector by storm and thus it is more than ever critical for GHG reduction to form the core of business processes.

Businesses and institutes, across all sectors, can consider the following steps in developing a GHG reduction roadmap:

• Policy – Defining and drafting a robust environmental policy for the company’s products or services.
• Determination & Evaluation the GHG emission sources - Ideally, the analysis should cover the entire supply chain from the sourcing of raw material to the transportation and delivery of an organization’s products and to the extent possible – even end of lifecycle/disposal.
• Carbon footprint Calculation - Evaluating the impact of the emissions in equivalent metric tons of CO2.
• Setting Bold & Realistic GHG Reduction Objectives - Determine what portion needs to be addressed through reduction of emissions at source and what will be offset through carbon credits, support renewable energy generation both on- and off- site etc.
• Implementation - Set about executing GHG reduction initiatives in a timely defined manner.
• Events - conferences, seminars, festivals or concerts whose GHG emissions due to the consumption of energy and travel are pretty high, can be effectively offset to accomplish a zero-carbon footprint.
• Achievement and Guaranteed Success – display world class stewardship by attainting a Net Zero status. 

Impact Leadership

From liquor giants like Bacardi Limited cutting its GHG intensity from manufacturing operations in half more than a year earlier than its 2017 target. ( equivalent to taking 15,000 cars off the road each year or reducing oil use by 165,000 barrels annually!!) to beer titan Carlsberg committing to achieving a zero GHG emissions from its breweries by 2030 ( 2015 base year)to Property-development and real estate company Castellum committing to reduce absolute scope 1, 2 & 3 GHG emissions by 100% by 2030 (2017 base-year), the chain reaction is very evident. Pharma goliath Pfizer has also committed to reducing its GHG emissions from its operations upto 80% by 2050 from a 2000 base-year with the addition that it will get 100% of their key suppliers to manage their environmental impacts, including GHG emissions, through effective sustainability programs and that 90% of key suppliers will institute GHG reduction targets by the end of 2020.

And more importantly, let’s not forget, the benefits to reducing emissions are tremendous, castellum has reported Scope 1 Emission reduction of more than 250 metric tCO2e and Scope 2 Emission reduction of more than 7530 metric tCO2e in 2017. Not only that, it has managed 40% lower emissions from heating than the sector average consumption of district heating and reported close to million dollars in annual savings in 2017!

As is evident these trends are positively impacting the entire spectrum of sectors across the entire planet and it isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. And now the question is as an organization are you willing to tap into the possibility of reduced CO2 emissions and related financial and social incentives?