Initiative "Treibhausgasprotokoll und wissenschaftsbasierte Ziele

To decarbonise your business, begin with implementing its greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting system and measure Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (1). Quantifying enables you to become aware of your business’ impact on climate, of where you should reduce of how much, and will allow you to monitor your GHG decrease over time (2). In short, better decision-making (3). To exemplify, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides the most used GHG accounting standards (4). Second, choose a baseline year (your GHG emissions starting point) and set a reduction target (your quantified and timed GHG destination) based on your remaining GHG budget (aligned with the global warming limit of 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels (5)). Then, delineate corresponding reduction milestones for the short and long terms, as well as absolute and relative emissions KPIs (1). Among others, the Science Based Targets initiative provides guidance on such targets to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 (6). But to realise your reduction goals, you will need to couple your numerical roadmap with concrete measures (1). Let’s say energy and technological changes for example (1). At this point, various approaches can help you define these measures according to your priorities. For instance if you focus on the financial benefits for your company, you can evaluate the GHG saving potential of each measure in relation to its required investment, payback period, return, opportunity costs (e.g., the turnover you could loose from important customers due to a too high corporate carbon footprint), etc. (1). A standardised evaluation – such as the EN 17463 norm on the Valuation of Energy Related Investments (VALERI) – will help you in this approach by supplying comparable results (1) (7). In such a case, starting with the easiest measures offering an immediate effect on the company’s profitability can increase motivation as well as budget for the more difficult ones, cutting greater amounts of GHG emissions (1). If your priority is to couple your carbon footprint reduction with broader environmental and social benefits, an approach such as the Comprehensive Accounting in Respect of Ecology (C.A.R.E.) may better answer your expectations (8). It’s simple: now you learned how to succeed your corporate decarbonisation, explore the miscellaneous approaches that exist and determine which one suits the best your needs! When implementing their decarbonisation, all businesses will discover themselves from a perspective they never experienced before. This offers them massive opportunities. Indeed, decarbonisation presents companies a myriad of possibilities, from efficiency gains to reinventing themselves completely. Progress, innovation and abundance are just at your fingertips.