How to reduce your company’s carbon emissions — From Carbon Footprint to Climate Strategy (2/2)

This article explores effective strategies for reducing carbon emissions.

This article was written with the help of Adrien Destrez, co-founder of Magelan, and Celia Poncelin.

To drastically reduce carbon emissions and help achieve net zero, companies can rely on:

• The Net Nero Initiative (NZI) framework, proposes a common language for all organizations wishing to steer their climate action in a sincere, ambitious, and transparent way toward achieving global net zero emissions, and in line with existing instruments and methodologies.
• Science-based targets, show organizations how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
• Their own strategy to make the company’s activities compatible with a world of net zero emissions by 2050.

1- The NZI framework to organize your climate action

The Net Zero Initiative framework offers organizations a way to describe and organize their climate actions in order to maximize their contribution to global carbon neutrality and avoid the usual greenwashing mistakes.

The framework is based on the idea that an organization must act in three complementary ways in order to contribute fairly to the global net zero goal.

1. Reduce the company’s emissions,
2. Reduce others’ emissions,
3. Remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

To contribute to global emissions reduction, here are your possible actions:

• Reduce your direct emissions (ex: favor electric transportation options, adopt an environmentally-friendly diet..)
• Reduce your indirect emissions (ex: change the location of servers to areas where electricity is low-carbon)
• Increase your avoided emissions (ex: modify your offer to replace emissive practices)

Note: the emissions avoided by an organization concern the emission reductions achieved by its activities, products, and/or services, when these reductions are achieved outside its scope of activity

• Increase your absorbed emissions (ex: modify agricultural practices). The atmosphere’s carbon is absorbed by carbon sinks (ocean, coral, plankton, bogs…). We must maintain the good health of these natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb and store the atmosphere’s carbon. While it’s hard to see a direct link between these mechanisms and business, we need to keep these ecosystems in mind because we can have an impact on them. For instance, to support sustainable agriculture, the company can offer sustainable food choices (from organic farming, without fertilizers…) at the office, or recommend certain restaurants near the office that work with local producers.
• Limit your future emissions (ex: define criteria for your future office). A high-growth company can wonder how to combine growth and emissions. Tackling this challenge can involve choosing low-carbon heating for offices when moving out, or limiting CO2 emission/ K€ revenue.
• Finance projects (ex: finance renewable energy projects)
• Contribute differently (ex: help clients reduce their own carbon footprint, outside of your product/service)

=> Net Zero Initiative

www.net-zero-initiative.com | Net-zero-initiative

2- The Science-Based Target: a clearly defined path to reduce emissions

The “Science-Based Target” helps you assess how much and how quickly you should reduce greenhouse gas emissions depending on your company. Here’s how it works:

=> 900 companies have already drawn their path thanks to Science-Based Targets. See the list here.

Companies taking action — Science Based Targets

The SBTi’s target dashboard shows companies and financial institutions that have set science-based targets, or have committed to developing targets. Updated every Thursday, the dashboard includes high-level information about each organization’s targets or commitments. sciencebasedtargets.org | Science Based Targets

3. Developing your own strategy

At this point, you should have:

• a sound understanding of the situation
• a carbon footprint with the 3 scopes
• a path to follow: -4,6%/year

Now, you need to identify the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions and implement them. You can make plenty of climate-friendly choices, at the company level. Here are some of them:

• Provide bikes to employees or craft a travel policy
• Ban plane business trips
• Limit the use of heating and AC
• Use low-carbon materials
• Promote home-office
• Promote a meatless diet
• Buy repurposed products
• Organize team-building events nearby

But to ensure maximum impact, you also need to work on significant greenhouse emissions, which are often induced.

For instance, a clothes marketplace needs:

• better choose its partners (example: require a % of recycled materials in the product)
• adapt the transportation of products (example: electric transportation for the last mile delivery)
• expand the products’ lifetime (example: repair service for products, renting possibility…)

Zalando committed to the following goals by 2025:

• 80% cut on its business operations’ carbon footprint
• 40% cut on its brand product footprint
• have 90% of its partners adopting a science-based targets approach (to involve them in the low-carbon transition)

Example of a climate roadmap — Back Market

Example of a climate roadmap — Shine

👉 Read Part I — From Carbon Footprint to Climate Strategy — How to measure your company’s impact on climate (1/2) 👈

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