Aiming for Net Zero: Key Insights for Companies Seeking to Make an Impact

As I cycled to a workshop on Aiming for Net Zero, I had no idea how my choice of transport was affecting our company’s future. The workshop was designed to clarify how recent UK government legislation affecting large corporations would ultimately effect SMEs.

In the past Akendi UK has had no obligation to measure or report its CO2e data, but we’ve looked into it over the last few years – seeking ways to reduce our carbon footprint with ‘easy wins’. We’ve also looked at how to offset our emissions through reliable offsetting companies that don’t simply plant a few trees and walk away. Rigorously measuring our CO2e output was not something we had considered.

At the workshop it became clear that to reach Net Zero under the new European directives means much more than just turning the lights and computers off at the end of the day. There are now 3 scopes to consider:

• Scope 1 is use of fuel
• Electricity use is covered under scope 2
• Scope 3 refers to all the carbon equivalent emissions generated in downstream and upstream operations. Included in scope 3 therefore, are all your suppliers and all the products and/or services you supply.

As suppliers, our CO2e emissions have suddenly become important. Many of our clients must report on their emissions and, as their suppliers, our input to their figures will become increasingly important.

For a corporate company, it makes sense to start with the big wins and look to make big reductions in just a few steps. Some large companies are doing this by assisting their suppliers in switching to Green Energy tariffs or installing solar panels.

After the big wins come the smaller wins. Companies like ours, whose own suppliers are mostly digital, have a pretty small input to corporate-sized scope 3 emissions. But by 2050, those corporations will have had to reduce 90% of their current emissions. This means they will be looking to their small suppliers to have reduced their emissions too. At some point, we will have to start measuring our total carbon equivalent emissions, so why not start now?

Just before this blog went to press, we had our first request from a customer to disclose our carbon reduction strategy.

This is how I found myself listing all our suppliers in a spreadsheet and trying to find their CO2e data on their websites. Surprisingly, little data is out there, even for large corporations who seem to be more interested in telling you how great they are doing than giving companies an easy way to work out what their emissions might be if they use their products. As a service provider Akendi UK does not have physical goods that require manufacture or transportation. If we did we would have to work out the emissions associated with those processes too. Progress is slow but there are plenty of websites that can help such as, carbontrust.com and ghgprotocol.org. I am gradually drawing up a picture of where our emissions are greatest, which will inform our own choices on which suppliers we use going forward. Those that are not able to supply data may fall by the wayside.

And that bike ride? Well, it turns out that your employees’ commute and business journeys must also be included in the calculated emissions. This is an easy way we can reduce our scope 3 emissions. We are a city-based SME, so we encourage our employees to walk, cycle or use public transport to commute and attend in-person business meetings. Due to the nature of our business, employees using a bicycle instead of a car has a large impact on our percentage annual emissions – with the added benefit of improving their fitness and wellbeing!