While many companies have announced ambitious climate goals, far fewer are making real progress towards lower emissions. Climate action plans are a roadmap to drive your organizations greenhouse gas emissions towards zero.
Here are five key things your organization needs to develop to develop and implement an effective climate action plan.
1. A champion. There needs to be a key person or small team that is ultimately responsible for carrying out the plan and demonstrating progress. Typically, this is the person who has been most vocal for climate work within your organization. This person could play any number of roles in your organization. At Clear Climate Strategies, we’ve worked with champions that serve as a Sustainable Director, an Operations Director, Facilities Manager, or even a Marketing Director. While the specific title isn’t so important, it is important that they have real leadership and influence within the company.
2. Buy in from senior leadership. Climate action plans chart out a decade of significant changes within a business, and implementing the plan will require significant investment. If the top leadership isn’t fully committed to action, and doesn’t make this commitment clear to their stakeholders, the plan isn’t going to succeed.
3. A strong business case for the plan. To secure this buy-in, you’ll need a clear view of the costs-and benefits of each action in your plan, including everything from capital spending on heat pumps and electric vehicles, to more staff time for focused sustainability work. Costs can be fairly easy to estimate, but don’t short-change the potential benefits. The plan should include a careful look at potential energy savings, grants and tax incentives, and improved employee retention and recruitment. The plan should also estimate increased sales and customer retention from sustainability marketing.
4. An accurate greenhouse gas inventory. You rclimate action plan is just a bunch of good intentions unless you are accurately monitoring your greenhouse gas emissions and showing real reductions. To drive your plan, you need to annually review and disclose your inventory and emission factors that reflect the improvements you are putting into place.
5. A storytelling strategy. To drive home the business case for your plan, you need to effectively communicate all of your climate accomplishments to all your stakeholders. You can organize your greenhouse gas inventory to translate into KPIs that communicate the most important sustainability messages that your customers, employees, and investors need to hear.
These aren’t listed in order of importance or in order of events….each elements needs to build off the others. But, at Clear Climate Strategies we have found that real action on climate change starts with a climate champion. Who is that person in your organization?