Tuesday 1 December 2020

‘The decisions you make as a business have a material impact on other people’s Net Zero performance’

Businesses must be responsible and work together to reduce emissions - you can change someone else's carbon footprint with your own behaviour.

That’s the suggestion from Simon Alsbury, Managing Director of Energise, who spoke to future Net Zero News Editor Jonny Bairstow in the third of a series of podcasts titled ‘Counting Carbon’ - in a discussion centring around Scope 3 downstream emissions, he emphasised that what one person does has a material impact on how other people perform.

These emissions cover a wide range of business activities but frequently include aspects such as purchased goods and services, business travel, waste disposal, distribution, investments and even how sold products are used.

Mr Alsbury suggested it is essential for businesses to know what their carbon impact is and know where their responsibilities sit so that they can play their part on the journey towards net zero by 2050.

He said: "The concept of this is that, particularly Scope 3, if you don't understand that interconnected element of it, you don't understand that we need to collaborate, we need to engage, we need to talk about how to tackle some of these challenges collaboratively, we need to share data sets, there needs to be a certain element of transparency and accountability to each other, then we don't make a material sign of progress, so it's important to have that responsibility to account."

Stay tuned for more content coming from Energise shortly.