Tag Archives: Climate

Accountancy, Climate, FInance, Wales

Global accountancy body in net zero first as profession steps up drive for sustainable future

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has become the first global professional accountancy body to have its net zero targets verified by the Science-Based Targets initiative.

 

The achievement highlights ACCA’s commitment to a sustainable future and is part of its larger focus on equipping and upskilling the accountancy profession across the world to drive the changes needed in businesses and organisations to achieve this.

 

Helen Brand, chief executive of ACCA, said: “The SBTi applies independent testing to net zero targets in line with climate science, and we’re delighted that it has recognised our approach and targets. It’s a great step forward on our journey to net zero.

 

“The accountancy profession has a critical role to play in driving good business decisions and best practice that will create more sustainable businesses and a better, greener future for all.

 

“We’re working hard to drive this transition through our 773,000 members and future members in 181 countries and our work to influence policymakers. And it’s important that we apply best practice in our own operations.”

 

ACCA is targeting a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2045, using science-based best practice.

 

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) drives ambitious climate action in the private sector by enabling organisations to set science-based emissions reduction targets. It brings together experts to provide organisations with independent assessment and validation of targets.

 

Find out more about the role of accountants in sustainability.

Climate, News

NatWest launches digital Carbon Planner to help UK businesses manage future fuel and operational costs

NatWest has announced the launch of its Carbon Planner, a free to use digital platform designed to help UK businesses manage their future fuel and operational costs, and reduce their carbon footprint to help them go and grow greener.

The launch follows the bank’s broader commitment to lend £100bn to businesses in Climate and Sustainable Funding and Financing by 2025.

NatWest research revealed that more than 72% of businesses expect their business will face increased difficulty in light of inflationary challenges citing increased costs of energy (56%), increased costs of materials (56%), and increased interest rates (37%) as the most challenging effects of inflation.

Alison Rose, Chief Executive of NatWest Group, said:

“Climate change is one of the biggest global challenges we face today, and small businesses have a critical role to play in helping the UK realise its green ambition.

“NatWest Group is committed to supporting its customers to understand and reduce their emissions. The launch of Carbon Planner is an important example of how we are putting tools in the hands of our customers to use their own data to cut costs and carbon emissions.”

The NatWest Carbon Planner is a tailored solution that provides personalised actions based on customer- data, enabling customers to make decisions as part of their plan when looking to reduce their carbon emissions, while outlining the financial impact of adopting such actions. NatWest’s A Springboard to Sustainability report estimated that 55-70% of business cases to reduce emissions will make financial sense for SMEs by 2030.

The platform also provides content, resources and solutions to help businesses make informed decisions so they can put actions into practice.

NatWest suggests that by businesses better understanding the commercial and carbon impact of their business operations, they will be in a stronger position to navigate the current inflationary challenges and make decisions about reducing their carbon emissions. With an ever-increasing focus on climate, the Carbon Planner can also help businesses with the ongoing management of their carbon reduction strategies.

Solange Chamberlain, Chief Operating Officer, Commercial & Institutional, NatWest Group said:
“Businesses are coming under increasing pressure due to rising costs. Many are fundamentally strong businesses which are experiencing a massive shock to input prices.

“As a bank, we can help businesses invest to save by switching from volatile commodities to renewable sources with predictable prices, and support businesses in taking actions to measure, evaluate and act to reduce their climate impact.

“Every business should consider if cutting carbon could cut costs and it’s important that we support the business community explore their options through access to finance to invest in cost reducing measures like energy efficiency.”

How does it help businesses on their journey to net zero?

The Carbon Planner takes a business through four practical steps to help them take action:

  • Inform – lets businesses know their current emission hotspots and suggests alternatives
  • Diagnose – helps businesses understand what is best for their business
  • Plan – supports businesses in developing a plan of actions
  • Deliver – signposting potential options available to help them to take actions that can help their business and have the potential to reduce impact on the environment

The platform was customer-led in design and developed with the support of more than 1,000 businesses.

Feedback from testing among both NatWest and non-NatWest business customers revealed that more than 72% of businesses expect their business will face increased difficulty in light of inflationary challenges citing increased costs of energy (56%), increased costs of materials (56%), and increased interest rates (37%) as the most challenging effects of inflation.

More than half (58%) of businesses surveyed think they will need financial help in order to reduce their carbon footprint. 77% believed the Carbon Planner will be ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ valuable to their organisation.

The bank’s research also revealed that 87% of UK SMEs are unaware of their business’s total carbon emissions, despite good intentions – with almost half (45%) of UK SMEs recognising it is important to lower their emissions in the next five years.

NatWest engaged with environmental management consultancy, Green Element to develop the questions, actions and model. The bank also worked with other 3rd parties to develop the tool, including consultancies and academic experts.

Will Richardson, CEO, Green Element said: “Working with NatWest on this project has been a phenomenal experience. Being a part of the solution and solving problems is at the core of what Green Element do. Having worked in this space for 20+ years, seeing a large banking group push boundaries and help with the 1.5 degree goal we are all trying to reach is just brilliant to be a part of.”

John Bamford, Head of Advisory, Northern Europe, EcoAct, an Atos company comments:

“Achieving a company-wide transformation plan to reach net-zero requires clear direction from leadership. We are therefore excited to see how NatWest brings customers along in their net-zero journey by facilitating a tailored data-driven tool to support their transition to a low carbon economy.

“From identifying priority areas and actions for reducing emissions and tracking progress, to connecting businesses to the funding needed to deliver their net-zero transition plans, NatWest’s Carbon Planner will help unlock some of the barriers businesses face when determining which low-carbon choices are worth making while building up collective climate action.”

Climate, Data & Analytics, News

Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact – The Clock is Ticking

Time is running out for many organisations with just eight years before The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP) comes into force, according to Simon Harris, Head of Critical Infrastructure at BCS (Business Critical Solutions), who believes that many are not ready.

“The sector has had an extremely challenging couple of years with the impact of Covid 19 and the increasing demands for data as global computing capacity continues to rapidly increase. It is therefore entirely understandable that some organisations may have been focussed on other areas as 2030 seems a long way away – however there is significant work to be done!”

By 1st January 2030 CNDCP requires signatories to make a binding commitment to achieve Power Use Effectiveness (PUE) of between 1.3 and 1.4 in sites built up to 2025. It has been estimated that around 60% of datacentres in Europe are in excess of eighteen years old.

“Amongst these the older data centres will have often been constructed with PUEs of 2.0 or more. In their current form they could be significantly distant from the required standard and in breach of their owners CNDCP commitments. They will also look increasingly unattractive to tenants pursuing socially responsible energy and carbon agendas. These operational sites will be challenging to upgrade, especially those with high availability requirements. They will require experienced design and construction teams, working closely with operational teams, in order to effect the changes to the engineering infrastructure that are required without service interruption,” explains Simon.

The simplified response to this problem may be to demolish and reconstruct at a convenient point before the deadline through a managed vacation and migration of IT processing. However, is not necessarily the best answer according to Simon as the original design and financial plans for these sites were often authored with the structural and architectural elements having a life expectancy of sixty years.

“There is also a significant embodied carbon penalty to pay in demolition and rebuilding. A substantial amount of the construction work involves the use of energy dense concrete and steel to such an extent that refurbishing an existing facility can save in the order of 70% – 80% of the carbon cost of a new build. An upgrade and refresh to critical infrastructure could liberate trapped electrical capacity for deployment to serve higher density and growing IT loads, for example through UPS replacement or cooling solution changes. These types of interventions will be more easily accommodated in Tier III facilities having two concurrently maintainable power and cooling paths, although the work will require careful planning and right first time execution. Nevertheless, such a solution overcomes the power availability challenges and takes the facility down a path towards better PUE performance,” he adds.

However, the PUE thresholds are not the only challenge embedded within the CNDCP. The pact requires data centre electricity demand to be matched by 75% renewable energy or hourly carbon-free energy by the end of 2025 and 100% by end 2030. This, according to Simon, is particularly challenging as these requirements are to be delivered in a period when demand for renewable resources will be universally increasing as a result of competing demands from the growth in big data, the decarbonisation of industry, commerce, transport and domestic consumers.

“The good news is that at BCS we have seen significant energy efficiency improvements delivered as part of a general refreshment of assets that are beyond their economic life. We believe that there is still time for organisations to successfully achieve the targets for CNDCP but the clock is ticking…”

News

Digital carbon footprint accounts for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions; and it’s set to double.

ClimateCare, an organisation dedicated to tackling climate change and improving lives, has today launched its new carbon footprint of the internet infographic to raise awareness of the growing climate impact of the digital world.

The profit with purpose B Corp is launching its infographic as a means to educate and raise awareness amongst business leaders of how energy hungry the digital world is. ClimateCare noticed a growing trend across the business community of a mistaken belief that the pandemic would likely lower their emissions due to the lack of business-related travel. ClimateCare contends that whilst overall emissions have gone down, digital emissions due to the growth in digital devices, streaming and data centre use have gone up dramatically.

Some key stats from ClimateCare’s carbon footprint of the internet infographic include:

  • Over four billion people are active internet users.
  • Internet traffic has tripled since 2015.
  • The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them accounts for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions. These emissions are predicted to double by 2025.
  • This is approximately 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year and equates to more than the climate footprint of all the cars on the road in the UK and US combined for a year[i]. .Streaming video and audio are the biggest drivers of explosive data growth, making up 63% of global internet traffic.

Vaughan Lindsay, CEO of ClimateCare, explains: “In our rush to stream video calls, send emails, store data and update our social media posts, we’ve lost sight of how energy-hungry the digital industry really is. We need to understand that the internet and digital technology involves far more than just the energy required to run our devices. Rather, the storing of data (the cloud), is one of the worst offenders of all. Far from being invisible, the cloud and the technical components to run it, generate extremely high emissions.”

ClimateCare advocates that businesses of all sizes need to start taking responsibility for their entire carbon footprint in order to achieve a Net Zero position. This involves measuring and reducing everything from business travel, considering energy use at the office, and understanding and reducing our digital footprint.

Lindsay explains how a business can go about this: “At its most basic, this is a process with a hierarchy of actions. To start with a business will need to measure their emissions to understand what their entire footprint is, and this includes their employees working from home too. Once they understand what this footprint looks like they must reduce and eliminate what they can. And, whilst they do this, offset what remains, through high quality carbon reduction projects.”

ClimateCare offers 10 top tips for businesses and employees to reduce their digital footprint:

  1. Switch off auto play when using social media and avoid using video if you only need audio;
  2. Close tabs you are not using to avoid videos playing in the background;
  3. Limit how often you use reply all to emails;
  4. Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t need to receive;
  5. Shut down your computer if you are away from it for more than two hours;
  6. Consider storing your data on a green cloud provider;
  7. Dim your monitor. Dimming from 100% to 70% can save up to 20% of the energy the monitor uses;
  8. Be mindful that, even in sleep mode, a computer continues to burn energy;
  9. Hold onto IT equipment for as long as possible and get it repaired rather than buying a new device;
  10.  Be selective about the tech providers you work with and take time to review their environmental policies and actions.

Lindsay concludes: “Ultimately the energy used in our digital consumption collectively emits the equivalent amount of carbon as the entire airline industry[ii]; a fact that until recently has remained unnoticed. Businesses need to start taking responsibility for this now. Anything less than that is not a responsible position for a business today.”

To view ClimateCare’s infographic please click here: https://www.climatecare.org/resources/news/infographic-carbon-footprint-internet/

Climate, Insurance, News

Direct Line Group Goes Carbon Neutral

As part of Direct Line Group’s commitment to take responsibility for its environmental impact, the Group is proud to announce that it is now carbon neutral through offsetting. This commitment is part of its three-step strategy to significantly reduce its carbon footprint year on year:

Step one: Disclose to track progress

We will disclose the Group’s carbon footprint including, for the first time, scope 3 emissions excluding investments. Once the work has been completed to calculate the investment portfolio, the Group intends to disclose the Group’s total footprint across Scope 1, 2 and 3. Ahead of many other organisations, Direct Line Group will be releasing their first TCFD disclosure in December, further strengthening the Group’s climate transparency reporting.

Step two: Commit to tangible actions

This year the Group committed to set Science Based Targets (SBT) for Scope 1, 2 and 3 and aims to submit those for approval within the 2 years’ timeframe set out by the SBTI. On Scope 1 and 2, the Group intends to set a target so that it can play its part in holding off some of the worst climate impacts, and avoid irreversible damage, by holding the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Step three: Offset while we reduce

The Group has partnered with ClimateCare to make a long-term, three-year commitment to offset those emissions under its operational control whilst working towards reducing emissions over time. This includes Scope 1 and 2 emissions and the Scope 3 activities under its direct control. This carbon neutral programme sees emissions offset through three high-impact projects that reduce carbon and support communities for a cleaner future:

Rainforest protection, Brazil

Deforestation continues to affect the Amazon, which produces more than 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen and contains 44,000 plant and animal species. This project cuts carbon emissions by reducing deforestation across 350,000 hectares of the Portel micro region of the Amazon rainforest. It does this by training and educating local communities in alternative agroforestry methods. The project reduces slash and burn agriculture, which has been one of the largest contributors to deforestation, provides access to official land titles for native families, and provides key habitat for more than 30 vulnerable species.

Water filters, Kenya

Fewer than half of Kenyans have access to safe drinking water, collecting it from open rivers, streams and other unsafe sources – leaving families vulnerable to disease. To counter this, the Aqua Clara project distributes safe water filters for families. As well as delivering health impacts, the project also reduces the need for people to boil water to make it safe to drink, which requires the burning of unsustainable energy sources such as wood or charcoal. This reduced reliance on fuel wood reduces family expenditure and reduces pressure on forests, as well as cutting carbon emissions. The team at Aqua Clara provides education and maintenance services to ensure that the filters are used correctly and remain operational.

Clean cookstoves, Bangladesh

Less than 20 per cent of the 35 million Bangladeshi households have access to clean cooking methods. Instead, cooking is done using traditional “three-stone” fires, which burn inefficiently, contributing to 49,000 premature deaths per year from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases caused by indoor air pollution. The Bondhu Chula project works with entrepreneurs to manufacture and distribute clean cookstoves. These cookstoves not only cut carbon emissions, but also funnel harmful pollutants – released during burning – out of the home, reducing indoor air pollution and improving health.

Penny James, CEO, Direct Line Group said:
“We are committed to a greener future but we know also that we cannot make change happen overnight. We see becoming a carbon neutral company as a significant step towards both protecting our business from the impact of climate change and giving back more to the planet than we take out. But we are also very clear that the goal we are working towards is reducing our emissions year on year so that we can be carbon neutral without the need to offset.”

ClimateCare’s Director of Partnerships, Robert Stevens explains:
“We work with forward-thinking organisations to turn their climate responsibilities into positive outcomes. Our trademark Climate+Care approach helps organisations take a smart approach to addressing their environmental impacts by offsetting their carbon emissions through projects which also support sustainable development.”

Climate, News

Why a step by step process to Net Zero is not enough

Oliver Forster, head of business development at ClimateCare

It’s encouraging to see an ever-increasing number of corporates committing to achieve Net Zero status. However, amidst the rush to publicly declare this intention, there remains some debate and discussion about what constitutes a robust and practical corporate strategy for achieving Net Zero.

When talking to clients, they often say that they are working hard to measure their footprint and set reduction targets, but admit that they are waiting to get this right before they take action to reduce and compensate for their emissions. And certainly, whilst these provisional steps are much needed, setting these long-term targets does little for the environmental damage being done right now. Companies need to take full responsibility for all their emissions produced both today and tomorrow. Our advice therefore is to drive actions simultaneously and at pace, and then modify and adjust moving forward. Put simply, we are up against a deadline to tackle climate change, and there isn’t time to take things one step at a time. Ultimately, it is today’s emissions that are causing tomorrow’s climate change and we need organisations to take full responsibility for their carbon emissions right now.

We need to more than halve emissions by 2030; this is equivalent to reducing the current emissions of China, India, the EU and the US combined. To make this happen, we need to use every tool in the box and do it quickly. And whilst this may seem daunting for many corporates, we cannot stress enough that this is achievable. Not only that, if they do get this right, they could well find themselves at a competitive advantage.

First off, companies will need to understand their current emissions. There are multiple ways to do this and third party companies such as The Carbon Trust can be a great help in getting this detail. Ultimately understanding the footprint is the first step in driving change and by doing this upfront work, companies are raising awareness of the issue internally.

After this these companies can then set targets for reduction that are based on science. The SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative) can help a company set appropriate targets. However, this can take time. And it’s time, that sadly, we just don’t have.

As such, during this time, companies should identify and action quick wins too. For instance, they might put an internal price on carbon to focus minds and drive innovation. They might also source as much of their energy as possible from renewable sources, and they might engage their whole team in making immediate reductions and in developing plans for systematic change to reach their reduction targets. All of these are great mechanisms to drive change and raise awareness.

In addition, companies can also consider developing low carbon products or business models. These can help turn climate change from a risk into a competitive business strategy. A recent survey by B Lab UK and ReGenerate revealed that 72% of the UK population believe business have a legal responsibility to the planet and people, alongside maximising profits. As such, we can be sure that it does make real business sense to do this and can make the difference between a consumer buying from a brand or not. And actually, it can also make the difference between a great candidate deciding to work for a company and a firm retaining great talent.

We would contend that offsetting shouldn’t be the final tick on the checklist. Instead we would suggest that firms can take responsibility right away by offsetting their current carbon emissions, whilst they put plans in place for reduction.

For companies to go Climate Neutral by offsetting all emissions through high quality, independently verified carbon reduction (avoidance and removal) projects, is an important component in the journey to Net Zero. It’s something every business can do today. And it’s the only way a company can take full responsibility for its current carbon footprint. This is because going Climate Neutral today compensates for a company’s existing carbon footprint immediately. This status should then be maintained whilst the firm takes steps to reduce its emissions as close to zero as possible, in line with a SBT. In time the size of that company’s footprint will reduce and the amount they need to compensate for will reduce. The organisation will become Net Zero when it reaches its science-based carbon reduction target and compensates for all its remaining emissions. They could then even go as far to work towards becoming carbon negative and take even more of a competitive share.

In going Climate Neutral today, companies can take immediate action right now, whilst they set themselves on course to meet their longer-term Net Zero target. Avoiding the climate catastrophe is not a step by step process, rather it’s a whole host of actions that need to be taken both simultaneously and immediately.