CARBON - 01.10.2006

We’ve gone “carbon neutral”

What does carbon neutral mean?

Going carbon neutral simply means that your business accounts for all of its carbon equivalent emissions and through a range of actions, reduces those emissions to zero. Every company, no matter how large or small, produces direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions just from being in business. These emissions could be from the use of electricity or as part of an industrial process. So how do you reduce your emissions to zero?

Zero carbon emissions

It certainly doesn’t mean you can’t use any energy. It actually means you have to take all practicable steps to reduce the amount of energy you use and then once you’ve done this you have to go through a process which is known as offsetting. The first stage is quite simple to understand, it gets complicated at the offsetting stage. So what do you need to do? Minimising your energy use wherever reasonably practicable isn’t that easy, but the benefits can be significant. How? Financially. The price of gas and electricity is continuing to rise, add to that the Climate Change Levy and any savings you can make have the potential to be beneficial. Where do you start? The first thing to do is to identify how much energy you actually use.

Tip. Contact Envirowise (see The next step) and ask them for a free energy survey. They will arrange for a consultant to visit your premises and run through potential energy saving ideas. However, don’t expect to get any benefits from sitting and having a chat with a consultant - he gets paid for his time regardless. You’ll need to take his advice (if you think it could benefit you) and put it into practice.

You’ll still be a long way off

Doing this will be a good start, but don’t expect to be able to claim you’ve gone carbon neutral at this stage - you won’t. There’s still the offsetting to go through. This is a scheme which was developed by the Kyoto agreement to help governments reduce the amount of carbon they use. It’s very complicated and is something that you’ll definitely need an expert to help you with. But we’d suggest you don’t bother. Actually being able to claim you’re “carbon neutral” is something for either the die-hard environmentalist who wants to show he’s done absolutely everything, or as an opportunity to use “environmental commitment” as a marketing opportunity. Now we’re not saying the companies who’ve done it aren’t committed to making environmental improvements, but in the same breath, we’re quite sure some wouldn’t have bothered if it didn’t have any additional benefits.

Will it benefit you?

You can definitely benefit instantly from making energy savings, but the benefits you’ll achieve from offsetting are probably minimal. Even big businesses aren’t convinced on climate change and going carbon neutral, otherwise they’d all be doing it. A recent study of the FTSE 350 indicated that 80% of the top 100 companies consider climate change a business issue, whereas it wasn’t a concern for over 60% of the next 250.

The next step

For further information on Envirowise and arranging a free energy use survey visit http://environment.indicator.co.uk (EN 01.04.02).