Turning your carbon reduction targets into effective action

Turning your carbon reduction targets into effective action

Your decarbonisation journey starts with setting your carbon reduction targets, but in order to achieve your goal and kickstart your journey, you need to take action in order to reduce your carbon emissions.

How can you guarantee that you’re taking cost-effective, practical steps towards your carbon target?

‘I love it when a plan comes together’

If it’s one thing we’ve learnt from watching the A team, you need a plan!

A plan for the most efficient route to achieving your carbon goal and getting you to net zero.

If you’re just employing carbon reduction solutions at random, you’ll likely not be making as much progress to stay on track as you could be to achieve your target.

The A team always managed to save the day after the careful execution of a well thought out plan and it’s why you must take the time to think about which solutions would give the most benefit to your business, look at your budget for decarbonisation (if you have one), then set out your strategy to take action to achieve your goals.

Creating a costed roadmap of solutions will enable you to follow a clear plan to reach your end goal. Start creating your strategy by:

Looking at all your options

There’s so many solutions out there to help you to decarbonise your business from educating your staff in becoming more energy-savvy to installing a waste heat recovery system on your site.

To kick things off take a look at your current energy consumption and look at which areas are creating the most emissions. When you’re looking at solutions, you could prioritise your existing problem areas to kill two birds with one stone.

What’s practical for your business – now and in the future?

It’s very important that this is considered. For example, if you rent your office space moving to a renewable energy supply or getting a corporate Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) are great routes to reduce your emissions after you’ve reduced your energy consumption, as your landlord might not facilitate onsite generation installations. But if you are planning on buying your own site, then on-site generation might be factored into your plans, but further down the line. When you’re creating your plan it’s important to consider your companies emissions and circumstances and how these are likely to change between now and your deadline, as solutions which aren’t viable now, might be more suitable in the longer term.

Setting your budget

Quite a few solutions will need minimal cost such as optimising your cooling and heating controls or changing to renewable energy supply. Other solutions will require more upfront costs such as EV chagrining infrastructure, switching your car fleet to all-electric, installing LEDs, or installing an air source heat pump on your site. It, therefore, makes sense to consider how you’ll fund these projects and how long it will take you to see a return on your investment (ROI).

You might wish to consider external funding opportunities as the availability of funding could impact your plans. Did you know that the UK Government is currently providing tax relief on certain machinery/plant expenditures? If you’re installing solar for example you might be able to claim a 1st-year allowance of up to 50% if you install them before March 2023. If you’ve thought of installing solar panels on your estate you might want to do so in the next two years so that you can claim this tax relief.

Senior buy-in

You’ll need buy-in from board-level stakeholders if you are serious about improving your companies sustainability. When you’ve looked at the solutions that are best suited to your business crunched the numbers and plotted them into your sustainability road map, you’ll have a clear, costed proposal to present to your C-suite.

Try and give them a good estimate on ROI as they’ll be particularly interested in the costs involved in these projects. As well as the ROI benefits, you should emphasise the reputational benefits that taking action towards and achieving your target could bring, as well as the reputational risk involved in publishing a target a plan in place to make sure you reach it.

Take action

Creating a step-by-step plan can seem daunting, maybe you’re unclear which solutions would be best for your organisation, or maybe you don’t know which actions you should do first.

Whatever support or advice you need, your team are on hand to help. Our team will work with you every step of the way to create a bespoke decarbonisation strategy for your business. For more information please email info@thermaticenergy.co.uk.

About Thermatic Energy Services

We work with end-user clients to help them achieve their energy management targets. Our main focus is giving our customers visibility to their systems and data to allow them to make actionable decisions to reduce their energy consumption, improve their building operation and achieve their sustainability targets.