Climate Change & Sustainability How to reduce emissions, take cost out and increase business resilience
Climate Change & Sustainability
Climate change has emerged as the defining priority of our time. Organisations are expected to have strategies for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), and Net Zero Carbon (NZC), aligned to corporate commitments and our global need to reach Net Zero by 2050.
Backed by changes in regulation, law, consumer and investor action, many organisations will need to substantially improve their sustainability and climate change activity and implement transformation programmes to enable and embed, not only new strategies, processes, and policies; but to truly embed a culture that embraces and formalises climate change, sustainability, and net zero carbon principles. However, in an environment where the economic outlook is mixed, given rising costs, economic uncertainty, and supply chain disruptions, not to mention consumer expectations re digital and the need to remain competitive - making the case for change when that change does not deliver immediate and direct results to the bottom line, is challenging. Even futile. The cost of sustainability is often prohibitive for businesses today.
So, the question to ask is, how do you secure funding for your climate change agenda in the current market? Simply put, you don’t. Instead, you secure funding for your Energy Management approach and make carbon emissions reduction a by-product. An effective Energy Management Strategy will reduce cost, increase resilience and reduce carbon emissions for a business.
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The importance of Energy Management In today’s rapidly changing energy landscape, businesses face a multitude of challenges that threaten their long-term sustainability and profitability. Price volatility, the looming threat of energy security disruptions, and the pressing need to adhere to stringent environmental regulations are just a few of the critical issues organisations must grapple with. Against this backdrop, the pursuit of sustainability transformation has emerged as a compelling strategy for businesses to not only mitigate these challenges but also unlock a myriad of benefits. At the heart of this transformation lies energy management, a strategic approach to optimising energy consumption and embracing renewable energy sources.
Six benefits to effective energy management:
Addressing price volatility
Enhancing security of supply
Fluctuating energy prices can wreak havoc on a company’s bottom line, disrupting financial planning and hindering operational efficiency. By implementing energy management practices, businesses can gain greater control over their energy consumption, reducing their reliance on volatile energy sources.
Dependence on a single energy supplier or source can leave businesses vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, potentially halting operations. Incorporating a diversified energy portfolio can significantly enhance a company’s security of supply, especially during times of geopolitical instability.
Boosting business resilience
Reducing operating costs
Sustainability transformation, spearheaded by energy management, is not just an environmental imperative; it is a strategic imperative for businesses to thrive in the 21st century.
Expected increases in energy demand, extreme weather events and cyber attacks are forecast to result in regular blackouts. By understanding energy consumption, businesses can provide contingent solutions to continue to produce and deliver their product and services when the lights go out.
Energy conservation efforts can significantly lower a company’s operating costs, providing a readily accessible source of savings. Often one of the biggest operating costs - energy can be up to 50% of OpEx for manufacturing companies. By implementing energy-efficient practices, businesses can reduce consumption and costs.
Adhering to legal compliance
Unlocking new revenue opportunities The renewable energy sector is a rapidly growing and lucrative market, offering businesses untapped revenue opportunities. Businesses with a substantial footprint, available land mass or roof space can leverage renewables to both support their own sustainability transformation as well as generating a steady stream of income for the business.
Governments around the world are increasingly implementing stringent
environmental regulations to combat climate change and protect public health, requiring businesses to reduce carbon emissions. Adoption of energy management practices aligns with these regulatory requirements, minimising legal liabilities.
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Why is the time to act now?
Our unique approach
At Project One, we help our customers to design and implement a systematic approach to becoming more sustainable. Whilst investment in new technology clearly plays a significant part in sustainability transformation, behavioural change is just as important. Before we get to alternative suppliers, we first need to bare down on current consumption and demand. Once we have that under control then we can genuinely focus on new and innovative ways to supply that demand.
The reality is that although many organisations will have made some moves to improve their approach to the environment and sustainability aspects of their operations, they may still lack the maturity to say they are at a point where these areas are addressed to the satisfaction of stakeholders such as investors, employees, customers and regulators.
Without this maturity, investors will look elsewhere, and you will fail to attract and retain employees and customers. Successful organisations will increasingly be judged not just on their operational performance but also their approach and success in managing these issues and risks. Most, if not all, decisions in an organisation will need to be seen through a climate change and sustainability lens, as well as the return on investment or mitigation of risk.
So how do we drive down consumption?
Detailed data capture to understand your baseload Targeted implementation of energy saving technologies Education and training of your people And of course, senior sponsorship and commitment to the cause. To do any of the above in isolation will deliver something; but to do all four in balance, will deliver a truly optimised energy management solution. Whilst others are jumping straight to solutions, we monitor what’s happening, analyse behaviours and address the root causes. This approach is required at every level if we are to achieve 2050 end-state ambitions and applies to individual companies, national bodies and world leaders.
If you don’t have a strategy and plan:
Your investors will invest elsewhere in those that do You may not be compliant to new regulation Your employee proposition will be affected You will lose market share and credibility.
At Project One, our purpose is to make a real difference for our customers, and the lives of their customers. Help your business find its purpose and align your ESG and NZC strategies to the real work your people are doing. Purpose-driven organisations have been shown to reap the benefits and out-shine the competition.
In a recent study, Deloitte evidenced that a 10% increase in employees’ connection with their organisation’s purpose led to a 4% improvement in profitability. Furthermore, purpose driven companies experience 25% higher customer loyalty than non-purpose driven companies, according to Bain & Co. And it’s not just about the bottom line, purpose-led companies have experienced higher employee engagement, lower staff turnover, increased referrals and talent attraction.
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Who is Project One?
We are an award-winning, independent consulting business specialising in change and transformation delivery:
We are change experts who make complex change delivery simple for you, with extensive global experience in multiple sectors Our change services are designed to deliver our customers’ most business-critical change agendas and keep you in control We are recognised in the market; as a leading consultancy; a great place to work; and for being climate leading.
We have been delivering complex change for over 25 years.
In 2019, we committed to the UN Race to Zero campaign and set ourselves the goal of halving our carbon emissions by 2030 and becoming net zero by 2050. Our approach is underpinned by the following guiding principles:
Offsetting is a last resort; we will do everything we can to reduce our footprint first We will be sustainable by design; we will consider sustainability in all new buying decisions We challenge the status quo; we will challenge our people and our customers to work differently Our people are paramount; we will invest in our people, educating and enabling them to think and behave differently We believe in holistic sustainability, where sustainability is part of a balanced scorecard of key operational performance metrics for our business.
Our unique approach and experience managing our own and our customers’ journeys to Net Zero, coupled with our deep programme delivery and change management capabilities, make us the ideal partner to co-design, mobilise and implement your climate change and sustainability transformation programme.
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Approach
Firstly, an IT Sustainability Vision was created covering the Why, What and How. This greatly aided communication and engagement and was essential to ensure that we had a clear ‘North Star’ for the team. Then a standard framework was used to assess all material areas of Technology using spend as an initial proxy (click the link here to view the framework). This was refined through a sustainability lens and resulted in a number of focused programme workstreams including Carbon Modelling, Vendor Management and IT Procurement, Cloud Optimisation and GreenOps, Application Rationalisation and Hardware optimisation. The programme was shaped around a phased delivery approach. Phase 1 – Accurately defined the Carbon Baseline and added controls into all new change initiatives to ensure that sustainability is considered in everything ‘we [Technology] do’ going forward. Engagement with key strategic vendors created a coalition of the willing and passionate. Phase 2 – Improved the current IT estate to leverage the best practise across the enterprise and make all areas efficient. Where possible, inflight initiatives would be used to deliver quick wins where their objectives aligned to sustainability goals. For example, existing Application Rationalisation which had a cost reduction/ agility objective could also provide excellent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction opportunities offering a win-win. Phase 3 – Address the longer term and more intransigent areas that will be more difficult to decarbonise fully, for example, network hardware and End-User- Computing (EUC) devices. Overall, an iterative and evolutionary approach is being taken – this is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires relentless focus to ensure the customer can halve emissions by their interim target and then halve them again repeatedly in time to achieve their Net Zero goal.
Shaping an IT Sustainability Programme to achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2030.
Our customer is a leader in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector with deep expertise in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the products they create and sell. They are a leader in reporting their enterprise emissions including their complex supply chain. However, in the IT domain they were less mature in assessing their specific carbon footprint. They recently set a new IT Strategy and now wanted to define a programme of work to confidently deliver a Net Zero emissions target for Technology by 2030.
Challenge
Outcome
In planning any journey successfully, it is vital to know where you are starting from! As an organisation, an overall model had been created which provided an assessment of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for the various business units, geographies, and functions. The IT function represented a relatively small part of these emissions and hence estimating its footprint using global assumptions was initially adequate. However, this generic model did not represent the current state of the IT function accurately and did not provide a solid baseline to understand where they should prioritise their decarbonisation activities. Challenge 1 - Agree an approach to developing an accurate Carbon Model for IT to clearly show where the largest liabilities were and which levers to pull to impact these. Challenge 2 - Ensure that the current year objectives were not jeopardised by a new initiative being implemented mid-year. Challenge 3 - Tell the story of sustainability robustly and persuasively to demonstrate that IT could deliver appropriate benefits to the group whilst also protecting the planet.
Through a robust shaping phase, we have clearly articulated a North Star for the programme and delivered an accurate view of where Technology is today. This is half the battle. Next is to ensure that everyone agrees that an accelerated Sustainability journey is worthwhile and one that should be made now. By aligning sustainability goals to the Enterprise and IT Strategy we make it much easier to get this collective agreement and ensure that we achieve a win-win. Use of Green Energy in Data Centres and Cloud instances is an excellent lever for Sustainability, but the greenest energy is the energy you don’t use. Therefore, Application Simplification and Green Development practises are excellent bed fellows for sustainability and have helped build a robust business case.
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enquiries@projectone.com projectone.com
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