Why?

• By gaining a clear understanding of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the business, your board will have a better understanding of the materiality and cost of climate-related risks and opportunities in the short, medium and long term.
• Your board will be able to make informed decisions regarding emission reduction strategies and investment.
• Your board will be able to assess your vendors’ and supply chain partners’ business operations and sustainability.
• You can ensure any legal requirements for climate reporting are fulfilled and will be in a position to respond to investor, shareholder and customer requests for information.
• Your board will be able to compare the organisation’s emissions profile and targets against others in the sector helping with competitive benchmarking and market positioning.

Calculating the company’s carbon footprint is a crucial step that will allow the business to identify where the biggest emission reductions can be made.

A comprehensive assessment of the entire value chain is recommended to understand your company’s greenhouse gas emissions – not just in relation to immediate operations, but also relative to your suppliers and customers. A full review of emissions includes scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions:

• Scope 1: direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company, for example emissions from company-owned or operated facilities and vehicles.
• Scope 2: emissions from the generation of electricity purchased by the company.
• Scope 3: all other indirect emissions within a company’s value chain.

Scope 3 emissions are often the hardest to tackle as they are outside of your organisation’s control, however they usually account for the more than 70% of a business’ carbon footprint, for those not in heavy industry sectors. Understanding your company’s scope 3 emissions will be essential to achieve net zero.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard provides guidance for companies to measure their carbon footprint, including scope 2 guidance and a scope 3 standard.

Other Useful Resources

• Briefing: What are Scope 3 emissions? | The Carbon Trust
• Scope emissions explained – chapterzero
• What are scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions? | Deloitte UK
• The Climate Governance Initiative’s climate disclosure explainer provides an interactive tool to navigate the climate disclosure landscape, including a section on measuring GHG emissions.

Why?

• Investors increasingly expect businesses to have clear climate action goals – by reviewing your peers’ commitments within or outside your industry you can better understand leading best practices.
• Accountability and clarity are key to ensuring the board is serious about achieving goals that align with ambitious climate action – it can be useful to connect climate targets to performance incentives.
• By embedding climate targets and milestones into your business strategy, climate risks can be reduced, and the economic opportunities of climate action secured and enhanced.
• Setting ambitious targets and aligning them with management’s interests (e.g. through incentives) can help spur innovation and the shift in mindset required to accelerate change.

Once your company’s baseline emissions have been measured, you can set an informed and meaningful target. Climate targets usually take the form of a GHG emissions reduction target from a defined baseline, to be delivered within a specific timescale.

Ideally, the target should address emissions from your entire value chain and adhere to the Science Based Target Initiative’s (SBTi’s) Net Zero Standard. According to the World Resources Institute, to ensure corporate net zero targets are credible and accelerate climate action, companies should follow the following three approaches:

1. Set Near-term science-based targets: sometimes referred to as interim targets (3 to 5 -year targets), which put a company on a net-zero trajectory without reliance on offsets. This will help your company understand how much, and how quickly, it needs to reduce emissions across the full value chain (scopes 1, 2 and 3).
2. Set long term science-based net zero targets: the scientific and international policy consensus states that net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be reached by 2050, to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 oC, as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
3. Invest in cutting emissions beyond the value chain: for companies to become ‘carbon positive’ or compensate for historical emissions, financing additional mitigation or carbon removal activities will be required.

Other Useful Resources

• World Resources Institute’s 3 Ways to ensure corporate net-zero targets are credible
• Businesses can sign up to the UN's Race to Zero campaign, a colaition of credible net zero targets from business, cities, regions and investors.
• Platforms for businesses to set and achieve ambitious commitments in relation to zero carbon electricity grids, electric vehicles and energy efficiency:
  • RE100
  • EV100
  • EP100
• Visit the ‘targets’ section of the Centre for Climate Engagement’s interactive climate disclosure tool

Why?

• Your company can benefit from reduced operational costs and climate-smart innovation by taking climate action. For example, in the shipping industry, New Climate Economy estimates if every fuel efficiency option was implemented, companies could save over $30 billion dollars annually.
• Your organisation can benefit from better access to funding, through investors or government incentives in your jurisdiction, as well as lower capital costs, such as lower valuation premiums, if your company is taking action on its net zero targets.
• As a director you may be exposed to litigation risk if you fail to meet governance standards in the stewardship of your company. For example, in the UK, environmental NGO ClientEarth, is bringing a claim against the board of Shell, alleging that it has failed to act in the best interests of the company, and with due care, skill and diligence; by failing to develop and implement a climate strategy aligned with the Paris Agreement.
• Your company’s ability to recruit and retain consumers and talent, as well as sales and income levels, could be negatively impacted if your company is not seen to be doing enough on the climate agenda.

Now your company has set a meaningful net zero target, how are you going to achieve it?

The following climate action steps draw on ERM’s ‘Promise to Action on Net Zero’ series, which highlights how businesses can translate their ambition into action.

First, your company should focus action on reducing emissions from all three scopes, before exploring greenhouse gas removal and offsetting.

Scope 1 and 2 emissions

According to the International Energy Agency, with targeted energy efficiency policies and solutions, we could deliver over 40 percent of the GHG emissions reductions needed to meet global climate goals without adding new technology

While scope 1 emissions are generated by a company’s processes that use energy, scope 2 emissions are created by the energy powering those processes. Strategies to reduce scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions:

Reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency: these actions both reduce emissions and lead to huge savings in your company’s energy costs. Practical steps to implement this strategy:

1. Undertake an energy audit – this will inform you of areas your company can reduce consumption and increase efficiency.
2. Use analytical tools to quantify emissions, determine cost savings and payback periods. Many companies use ‘marginal abatement cost curve’ analysis which can be a powerful tool to evidence the business case for energy reduction and build internal buy-in.
3. Expand energy efficiency initiatives into the supply chain and other parts of the value chain, including with the final consumer.
4. Explore partnerships to share knowledge and experiences, for example the EP100 initiative provides a platform for best-practise sharing and peer-to-peer learning in order for businesses to improve energy productivity, by increasing economic output and reducing energy input.

Choose renewable energy sources: setting clear goals, with interim targets for scaling up renewable energy use, will allow your company to focus its actions and mobilise resources. Your company may choose to generate renewable power itself or source it from the market. Two common methods include:

1. Power Purchase Agreements – a contract between an independent power producer and your company to purchase renewable energy at an agreed cost, common for large electricity consumers to reduce market price risks.
2. Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) – tradable certificates representing 1 MWh of renewable electricity, the purchasing of RECs must be considered carefully to ensure they are from credible sources.

If companies expand their own generation capacity and pursue direct long-term agreements with electricity providers, they can help shift energy markets which will further reduce the cost of renewable energy. Joining initiatives such as RE100, a global platform of companies committed to source 100 % electricity from renewable sources, shows leadership and commitment, whilst also supporting systemic change in power grids and energy markets towards a net zero future.

• Invest in technological innovation: while this will not immediately reduce emissions, innovation is critical to find the most cost-effective long-term solutions. The harder to abate sectors in particular, such as heavy industry and heavy transportation, require innovative processes and new fuel processes to decarbonise. The Mission Possible Partnership focuses on developing partnerships to deliver key initiatives for heavy industry and mobility sectors to secure net-zero emissions by 2050.

Scope 3 emissions

As the most significant contributor to your company’s overall GHG emissions, reducing emissions in the supply chain should be a major focus of implementing your climate action plan. CDP highlights four key steps to reduce scope 3 emissions and engage suppliers in taking climate action:

• Leverage your buying power to drive transparency within the supply chain in climate-related reporting and disclosure
• Set clear expectations and strategically engage with your suppliers to drive climate action, for example through the sharing of best practises from your own decarbonisation journey or preferential pricing treatment.
• Cascade science-based targets through your supply chain.
• Collaborate with other companies in the sector to accelerate action and build momentum amongst your suppliers.

To learn how some leading companies are engaging their supply chain to reduce scope 3 emissions, read Transform to Net Zero’s Buyer-Supplier Engagement guide to Reduce Scope 3 emissions.

Many companies are going a step further and striving to become climate positive or carbon negative. This goes beyond achieving net-zero carbon emissions and removes additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere delivering a positive climate contribution and addressing historical carbon emissions. 

Carbon Offsets

Reducing emissions should always be the primary focus of a net zero strategy. Carbon offsetting – the reduction in, or removal of, carbon dioxide or other GHG emissions to compensate for emissions made elsewhere – should only be considered once your company has decarbonised it’s emissions as far as current technology allows. For a briefing on carbon offsetting and greenhouse gas removal, see Chapter Zero’s Carbon Offsetting explained, and the Centre for Climate Engagement’s Greenhouse Gas Removal Briefing Paper, respectively. If your company does consider offsetting, thorough and rigorous background research should be undertaken to ensure the offsets are credible, and greenwashing behaviour is not inadvertently encouraged or promoted.

Other Useful Resources

• Pathways to Net Zero – sectoral pathways to net zero by 2050: Pathways-to-Net-Zero.pdf (edf.org)
• Information on engaging suppliers to reduce your scope 3 emissions
• TONZ-Transformation-Guide-Buyer-Supplier-Engagement-Sept-2021-pages-1.pdf (transformtonetzero.org)
• 1.5°C Supplier Engagement Guide | Exponential Roadmap Initiative
• 4 steps for reducing Scope 3 emissions and accelerating action through your supply chain – CDP
• ERM and EDF’s guide to overcoming the obstacles of corporate climate action: Net Zero: Obstacles and Catalysts for Business Climate Action
• Chapter Zero’s Carbon Offsetting explained
• Centre for Climate Engagement’s Greenhouse Gas Removal Briefing Paper

Why?

• Your company may be required to report and disclose more climate-related data and progress due to the changing policy landscape. Visit our interactive disclosure tool for further information.
• Clear climate reporting and disclosure in the public domain can help your company convey your climate ambition appropriately, and avoid greenwashing claims and any associated legal risks.
• Reporting and disclosure can help your company to secure financing and attract investment, with some banks offering discounted interested rates for companies achieving their decarbonisation goals – there is increasing demand from the lending and investor community for robust climate data and information to inform lending and investment decisions – more than 700 global investors collectively managing over $68 trillion in assets have joined Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative ensuring climate action by the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters.

It is important that you understand the reporting and disclosure requirements in your jurisdiction. In some regions, mandatory climate-related disclosure requirements are in place, while others encourage use of voluntary standards and frameworks as talks around mandatory requirements progress. Read the Climate Governance Initiative and Commonwealth Climate & Law Initiative’s (CCLI) primer on climate change which explores director’s duties and disclosure obligations at a jurisdictional level.

There are several reporting and disclosure frameworks available and determining which framework to adopt can be difficult. For an overview and explanation of the tools available, visit our ‘Navigating the climate disclosure landscape’ interactive tool.

Many companies grapple with determining the correct area in the organisation to report and disclose. As climate change has the potential to create real financial impacts throughout an organisation, climate considerations should be an integral element of disclosure, and included in annual reports or financial filings, for example.

Other Useful Resources

• Navigating the climate disclosure landscape explainer
• Navigating the climate disclosure landscape interactive tool
• Climate Change Disclosures: What Board Directors Need to Know
• Primer on Climate Change: Directors’ Duties and Disclosure Obligations