Why? Increasingly, organisations are setting targets to progressively step down its carbon emissions time to “net zero”. Net zero being the global carbon footprint target to be achieved by 2050, with an intermediate step achieve a 50% carbon reduction from current levels in by 2030. These step down ambitions are designed so that global warming scenarios can be achieved closer to 1.5°C, rather than the current path of more than 3.0°C.
When, What and How. Three essentials to any person’s or organisation’s climate transition plan.
When are the goals to be achieved and reliability with current momentum?
How are the goals to be achieved and are science-based reductions?
What is the amount of carbon reduction targeted and is it realistic?
In the shorter-term, leading global organisations are targeting net zero step downs of its “direct” scope 1 and 2 emissions well before 2030. Leading organisations are implementing science-based reduction initiatives, as opposed to buying carbon offsets, to achieve those ambitions.
For many businesses this “direct” emission reduction often represents less than 5% of its overall carbon emissions footprint. In many cases, 95% of an organisation’s emissions arise from its “indirect” value chain being those customers and suppliers it can align with to collectively make a greater climate positive impact.
Acting today to achieve that 5% reduction is far more impactful than targeting all the reductions at once in 2030. Organisations achieve a cumulative savings of 7 to 8 times the current emissions as compared to not responding at all.
Organisations with 95% plus “indirect” emissions often have relatively large employee workforces. The households and families of that employee workforce themselves have their own carbon footprints. That employee household footprint can be up to 10 times more than their employer’s total footprint and 50 to 70 times greater than the employer’s “direct” carbon footprint.
Consumers are nimbler in their decision making and actions and so can rotate their lifestyle habits much sooner and with greater impact to step down their carbon emissions.
If you act and set a personal goal to target a 1% reduction of your current carbon footprint each year to 2030, that reduces your overall carbon by around 4% as compared to your current carbon footprint. Certainly helpful, and comparable in relative size to many organisations’ initial climate transition plans.
In both cases, these outcomes fall well short of the targeted 50% carbon footprint step downs required to maintain global climate warming to the 1.5°C scenario.
Globally the current average carbon footprint is 16 kg of carbon per day. The 50% reduction targeted by 2030 means that as a minimum every person needs to step down their carbon footprint by 8 kg of carbon per day – Stepdown8.
As an employee, acting now and stepping down your carbon by 8 kg per day, or even better 8,000 kg per year, for every person in your household or family provides a more impactful outcome. Depending on your current carbon footprint this could translate to 20% or more carbon reduction.
As an employer, promoting employee engagement across your employee network with personal climate action plans for every person to Stepdown8 accelerates and exponentially increases the impact of the employer’s “direct” carbon net zero plans.
Get or download infini to measure your own current carbon footprint today.
As a rule of thumb if your current carbon footprint is 18,000 kg or more per year consider more active steps or modest investments you can make to step down your carbon footprint by 8,000 kg per year.