How will COP26 affect your business? Greener Energy Futures explains all
Simon Pyne, CEO and Founder of Greener Energy Futures, discusses the impact of COP26, explaining the biggest takeaways from the conference, what this means for businesses and how the organisation can help others to make carbon reductions.
The climate crisis is polarising. From COP26, we can see two groups emerging with separate narratives about what we should do about climate change; we’re not seeing a widespread consensus. Instead, we can observe big powerful countries and organisations committing to specific, moderate scale, medium-term actions and targets and another group, which includes activists and scientists, saying that agreements are not enough or proportional to the crisis and are calling for more significant, holistic and urgent action.
COP 26 and how it will affect businesses
The short-term ramifications are that the organisations that have already begun tackling the climate crisis will be able to have very clear positions and demonstrate their competitive advantage.
To better understand the medium-term impact, we need to look at the Paris Conference of Parties in 2015 as it took a few years after the event for ‘Net Zero’ to become a common currency for governments and organisations to buy into.
I expect there will be new things that come out in the wash, perhaps regarding biodiversity and reforestation. Businesses need to stay attentive to these new discoveries or policies that are emerging and adapt to meet changing targets and customer behaviours.
Organisations should also expect to have a decarbonisation strategy as there is going to be more requirements for businesses to be accountable for emissions. Ultimately, businesses will need to understand what their market and governance systems expect of them.
I’d recommend considering two sets of strategies; one for high risk, high action and another for a more moderate kind of action. By doing this, organisations can understand how & why to respond to external requirements, and the risk/opportunity gap between them.
Making a decarbonisation plan
A simple start is to follow these 3 steps:
Establish what your emissions are and how they link to your activities and objectives
Put together a practical, actionable strategy to reduce carbon emissions, with risks & opportunities
Execute the reduction plan and refine it as you go
We can help you develop & deliver this plan; with our team of environmental consultants, we enable organisations to understand their carbon impact, set clear goals and identify projects and funding through assessment and planning to delivery.