“A business’s job is to bring hope”

The human side of net zero: creating movements for change

“The relative shifts that are happening at the moment — it’s like building your own aeroplane, and flying across the UK. Hitting net zero is like building your own rocket, orbiting the earth 16 times and then getting back safely.

The engineering requirements are orders of magnitude — it’s just worth thinking about what’s happening, with what needs to happen.”

Mark Workman, Lecturer at Imperial College & Co-Founder of Carbon Removal Centre.

60 FTSE100 companies have signed up to the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, the largest global alliance committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Only 23 of those companies have targets in place to reduce their emissions, while the remaining 40 FTSE100 companies don’t have any net zero plans to speak of.

Research found that 28 FTSE companies are on course to contribute to a global temperature rise of 2.7°C or above by 2050. Scientists believe such a rise would lead to a worst-case climate scenario.

In our final exchange of the year experts, innovators and change-makers share how they’re leading the way.

“A business’s job is to bring hope”

Stéphane Zahari, Head of Platform — Ocean Bottle.

• Industry leaders making a difference. WSP, the folks behind London’s Shard, are the world’s largest environmental consultancy; they’ve made a commitment to halve the carbon footprint by 2030.
• Action from the bottom up. The Butterfly Effect is a community engagement initiative launched by engineering firm Jacobs. The programme works with young people, giving them the information, knowledge and understanding they need to consider sustainability in every decision they make. It covers 8 themes aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

• Commitment vs action. There’s limited value in targets without plans. While plans may change, the act of planning is a great way to unlock engagement across organisations. With eight climate-aligned initiatives and billions of funding being put towards tackling climate change, Legal & General is at the forefront of a net-zero economy. See how they did it >
• “Every job should be a climate job”. Whilst some folks might ask ‘how does it relate to my job?’ leadership has to go one step further and answer ‘how does it relate to me?’ There’s a need to operationalise wider company goals, so everyone can see (and track) their impact, galvanising employees behind the mission. Learn more about B Corp >
• ‘Older’ people care about the climate crisis. There’s a common narrative that its noisy youngsters who’ll push forward action against climate change. This isn’t true. In the UK, over three-quarters of baby boomers — agree that climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental issues are big enough problems that they justify significant changes to people’s lifestyles. This was as high as any other generation. Chapter 7 of Bobby Duffy’s book ‘Generation’ was recommended >>

% who agreed with “environmental issues are big enough problems that they justify significant changes to people’s lifestyles”. Learn more >>

• Keep talking about net zero. Building a shared understanding of the trade offs creates the social capacity and appetite to make the necessary structural, environmental and behavioural changes required.

“We need this dialogue. If we don’t there is no societal capacity to comprehend and engage in a dialogue, and then we get these crazy trade offs where you can’t regenerate renewables or low carbon technologies because people don’t want it in their backyard. We need to talk about it so people can understand it.” Mark Workman.

If you’re a business leader that’s considering how to plan and action your business’ net zero targets, drop Rich Poole a line to hear about how we’ve supported big organisations to take the first step.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts — jassi@fluxx.uk.com. Stay up to date with how we’re evolving the Exchange series for 2022.

Jassi Porteous leads Marketing at Fluxx and magneticNorth, a design and innovation powerhouse that designs better futures for companies and their customers — one where brilliant design and innovation considers people, purpose and planet.