How businesses can work towards carbon neutrality

Reducing carbon emissions is big news and for good reason. Climate change scientists have long argued that we need to keep global warming below 2°C and closer to 1.5°C to avoid catastrophic weather events and resource scarcity. 

As individuals, we can take steps to reduce our carbon footprint but businesses must also do their part if we’re to meet the UK government’s ambitious net zero target by 2050. But it goes beyond government targets - we need the combined effort of everyone to tackle one of the biggest challenges of our time. 

Use a carbon calculator 

So, what can your organisation, company or enterprise do as we embark on the journey to net zero? This is a complex area, but you need to start by knowing your carbon emissions. For small and medium-sized businesses, the Carbon Trust has a calculator that can help. It will not be exhaustively comprehensive, but it will give you a good idea of how much you’re polluting. 

Track your emissions the smart way

You can also track your carbon emissions in real time, a means by which you can set reduction targets. Thanks to smart technology, it’s getting easier to access powerful data through an intuitive dashboard. Here at GridDuck, we can monitor and control hundreds of appliances in commercial buildings, including tracking your carbon emissions 24 hours a day. We have worked with the likes of schools, office buildings, manufacturers, farms and restaurants.

By tracking how you use your electricity, you might be able to save energy and reduce your carbon emissions. For every 10% reduction in energy, you will roughly reduce your carbon emissions by 10%. You can also try to use more energy at night, when it is less carbon intensive. Moreover, you will save money on your bills, making this a double-win.

Factory machinery over 7 days

The energy sector: a key player in the net zero journey 

Finding a reliable source of clean energy is essential if we’re to make significant progress on reducing harmful greenhouse gases and moving away from fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency estimates that the energy sector - its production and use - accounts for 75% of the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are driving our global temperatures upwards.   

The IEA recently released a comprehensive report about the pathway to building a global energy sector with net-zero emissions. It urges us to invest in renewables such as wind and solar. The IEA states that renewables need to account for 90% of electricity generation by 2050. Levels in 2020 were about 29%, demonstrating the scale of the challenge. 

As a business, it can be daunting to shift to renewables when you have the reliability of the power grid. One thing you can easily do is look for solar lighting. It is eco-friendly and is a good alternative to incandescent lighting. Tube lights are another option; they are connected to a reflective dome on the roof, allowing them to trap sunlight and illuminate particularly dark rooms.

Perhaps you already have some renewables on site, such as electric charging points for vehicles or solar PV panels. GridDuck can monitor your renewables so that you are maximising their use, and we can manage EV chargers and batteries via an app. We worked with a university in Thailand to balance their air-con use against the solar PV and EV charging on campus. 

Becoming energy efficient 

Did you know that the energy wasted by offices in the City of London could power 65,000 homes? Yet only 14% of commercial buildings have a building management system. Energy waste is a bit like throwing away food you’ve bought but don’t eat. Both contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions and cost us money. In order to get anywhere close to net zero, we need to become more energy efficient and less wasteful. 

In its report, the IEA says that “a major worldwide push to increase energy efficiency” is essential. It estimates that we need to improve our energy efficiency by an average rate of 4% every year through 2030 – about three times the average globally over the last two decades.

You can become more energy efficient as a business by monitoring your energy consumption across your commercial estate or sites. But you do need to be committed to finding solutions. Just switching off appliances when not in use can save you between 15% to 30% off your energy bill. 

The GridDuck office on the GridDuck dashboard

You can also receive a financial incentive to reduce your reliance on energy during peak times, by shifting your power use in real time. This is called demand side response, and is encouraged by providers to prevent the power demand from outstripping the supply.  

Together, refrigeration, air conditioning, and heating systems in businesses account for 10% of total UK energy demand. Some of these appliances can be shut down at intervals without interfering with operations. We’ve proved this is possible at a London cocktail bar, saving them 28% in energy costs. It’s worth thinking about whether this is something you could do at your place of work. 

Buying carbon offsets 

Carbon offsets are a type of trade, allowing you to do something to compensate for your own carbon emissions, such as planting trees or providing energy-efficient cooking stoves to people living in developing countries. As good as the intention might be, this can often fall short in tackling the real issue of climate change and can be used as a PR exercise by larger polluters like airlines and oil companies. 

Younger trees, for instance, cannot store as much carbon as their more mature counterparts. Older forests store an enormous amount of carbon, slowing down climate change, and no amount of offsetting is going to change that. While no one is likely to argue that planting trees is not a laudable exercise, it’s best to accept that we still need to reduce our carbon emissions and become more energy efficient, in addition to any other things we might do. 

If you are interested in carbon offsetting as part of your company’s efforts to go more green, try to use a retail certification programme such as the one offered by Green-e Climate. It provides rigorous, third-party oversight so that buyers get what they pay for. The best carbon offset programmes are those that are transparent, so it pays to do a bit of research and not be taken in by what can be exaggerated claims. 

Sustainable hosting 

Web hosting services are invisible fossil fuel consumers. Data centres are used to host websites and they use vast amounts of energy because they need to be powered at all times and kept cool. Google uses on-site solar power as a renewable fuel supply and continues to make huge investments in solar and wind power. Its aim is to run on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times, by 2030. 

In the absence of Google’s vast resources (and that’s pretty much all of us), you can look into a few eco-friendly providers. GreenGeeks, founded in California in 2008, is considered a market leader.  

Small steps, big impact 

No one is claiming this is easy. It will require a huge amount of determination and the collaboration of the international community. We have some responsibility, too, as citizens and business owners. Yes, we can stand on the sideline and point the finger at the big polluters, asking them to clean up their act instead. In reality, we should make small changes in our own lives first, at both work and home. The small steps we take now will cumulatively make a bigger difference later.

GridDuck worked with a nonprofit to calculate our impact in reducing carbon emissions. For a typical commercial or building space of 150 square metres, we can reduce the carbon footprint (CO2 eq) by 9029 kilogrammes. If you multiply that single building by 100, it’s 900 tonnes or the carbon dioxide equivalent of 911 flights from London to New York or driving a car 112 times around the world. 

If we can do anything to help reduce your carbon emissions or to reduce your energy consumption, contact us. Change starts with us first.