Hi

Can anyone prove that their Company will be at Net Zero by XXXX the date that their Company have set to be fully at that level?

I cant see it, as we all have mobiles and will no doubt (at some point) have electric cars, both of which require components that are dug up and sorted by children being paid approx. 50p cents (69 cents or whatever the rate is) a day. Our laptops probably too

How can each Company meet its targets if its buying and possibly selling items that have a build (manufacture) or a waste stream with components in that dont reduce their footprint etc

Do you buy from Russia, China, India (2070), Japan, or Iran etc - any transition plans in place, to share from their companies?  

Anyone any ideas?

Do we just retire now and dont work, and dont have any cars, phones etc etc etc 

I find it very contentious, dont wish to cause a stir, I'm only asking a question, the forum is not about being on a "side", it should be debatable and proven surely that your Company/Business can state that it "will achieve" and it "will meet" its targets etc, or ability to move those targets / objectives if its not possible to meet them by XXXX year?

Protestors use all of the above, which I find quite hilarious, and their have been many exposed that they live the life of luxury, hence I feel that this doesn't sit right

Apologise in advance, but I'm only asking a qustion and trying to find any help, that someone out their can help us all to solve this puzzle, and ultimately help our Company / Business to meet its targets / objectives in the short/medium or long term

Thank you to anyone who has the answers        

Given HM chancellor is talking of having all major companies provide their "credible" plan by 2023 it is a timely question. The whole carbon calculation is IMHO a farce as it looks at local data points e.g. how much fuel / how many miles our transport achieves. Problem is if you include all the data points then we would each need a "Deep Thought" ergo in answer to the question "Forty-Two".

Instead we will likely see, as with all such edicts, a trickle down: The public spending authority will challenge its bidders who will challenge the main contractors who will challenge their suppliers and sub-contractors who will challenge their... ad infinitum. At the bottom of the pile the overseas gang master will turn off the one electric light in the workshop thereby resolving the issue for a major FTSE listed company whose chairman jets around the world on a daily basis.

Alternativley we will see the emergence of multiple carbon consultancies taking up employee time seeking answers to the questions which feed their specific calculations. Sat in large air conditioned city centre offices to be close to their clients with huge data centres crunching the numbers the output will be what is already known to get the supply chain to make efficiencies in resources without putting up the cost as those yet to be embroiled in the pantomime are continuing to do things cheaper.

I think with most companies a target of "NET Zero" as akin to "zero accidents". It is only achievable if you fiddle the figures. I think it would be a lot wiser for companies to just target a continuous reduction through more efficient processes and better education.

Try not to get sidetracked onto such issues as child labour, whilst that also needs to be tackled it is not relevant to carbon emmissions. If well paid adults were carrying out the task it would still have the same impact. As a side note, the enviromental impact of an electric car over its expected life cycle is still a lot less than one with a combustion engine, although still very far from being "carbon neutral", even mor eso in the UK when we have a large proportion of renewable energy in the grid, supplying the power to the cars. 

My company (a medium sized organisation) is trying to reduce our energy consumption by 10% in the next 3 years, and then 5% for every 3 years after that. First will be the easy wins, such as changing lightbulbs for LED ones, replacing old machinery, replacing heaters, insulating etc. It will get harder as we go forward.

The other angle is to educate and encourage your staff to make changes in their work life. Car sharing to get to work (maybe with more flexible hours to encourage this), switch their lunches to plant based food (yes I am vegan, but pretty much every peer reviewed paper agrees on this, animal agriculture produces 18% of calories, uses 83% of farmland and produces 60% of agricultures greenhouse gases, including a lot of methane which is 80 x more potent than CO²). Larger firms could consider generating some of their own power, via solar or window. The knock on for this is that they can reduce costs in the medium to long term.

As a vegan I often get criticised for not being perfect (I use money with tallow in it, some insects/rodents are killed to grow crops, my tyres aren't vegan, nor is my phone etc.). Not being perfect is never a reason to not try. If everyone did their best and made better choices we have a chance. Unfortunatly until the larger companies and countries sort themselves out it is all a bit peeing into the wind. I often say that I am vegan/enviromentalist because I am a coward. When the world finally goes to pot, I can at least sit back and say "well it wasn't my fault!".

I think as usual there are differeing terms depending where you are in the 'jiurney'  Net Zero is the goal but there are many different way to interpret that - zero greehouse gas emissions for example - so takle away all yoru chillers and air con units...:) .....and when some say Net Zero they are generally dirty industries and they offset...as always the answer isn't a straightforward one...

You need to look at your buisness/ product lifecycle and judge what can be done at each stage...so how companies such as Google can say they are net zero when they run massive datacentres on local power which can range from sustainable power to big dirty coal fired stations...some places they can say that in others they really can't...

To be honest I am getting sick of being told about the climate emergency having said it for the last 30 years and implemented (I admit short /medium term) environmental  ....we need to actually do something rather than glue our hands to the M25..emission dropped during lockdown only for everyone to moan they wanted back to the office...now emissions are back up...mmm I wonder why...

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

My company (a medium sized organisation) is trying to reduce our energy consumption by 10% in the next 3 years, and then 5% for every 3 years after that. First will be the easy wins, such as changing lightbulbs for LED ones, replacing old machinery, replacing heaters, insulating etc. It will get harder as we go forward.

Very common ISO 14001 targets until you hit the finance wall where investment can no longer be justified because the competition are cheaper and you have to devise a new set of metrics (collected that T-shirt during my career).

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

The UK has reduced its “carbon footprint”... until you realize that most of that has not been achieved by improving our energy efficiency but simply by moving our “dirty” industries out to places like China and India.

It was the necessary investment to meet ever stringent national emissions and safety standards that made overseas cost per unit production attractive to the board and the consumer.

I worked for one employer who closed down UK operations because the site power plant needed £250K investment to tackle chimney stack exhaust particulates.

One issue that is rarely mentioned in the rush for battery technology - is the most likely increased mining activities to get the required rare earth metals.

Whats the environmental impact of digging up vast areas of land? Deforrestation? Disturbance of habitats? Water/river pollution? etc 

Then the transport cost and smelting/refining environmental impacts of those activities.

I think hydrogen technology is a better way forward - hydrogen via electrolysis of water using wind generated electicity. When hydrogen is burnt only water as a by product/exhaust.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Given HM chancellor is talking of having all major companies provide their "credible" plan by 2023 it is a timely question. The whole carbon calculation is IMHO a farce as it looks at local data points e.g. how much fuel / how many miles our transport achieves. Problem is if you include all the data points then we would each need a "Deep Thought" ergo in answer to the question "Forty-Two".

Instead we will likely see, as with all such edicts, a trickle down: The public spending authority will challenge its bidders who will challenge the main contractors who will challenge their suppliers and sub-contractors who will challenge their... ad infinitum. At the bottom of the pile the overseas gang master will turn off the one electric light in the workshop thereby resolving the issue for a major FTSE listed company whose chairman jets around the world on a daily basis.

Alternativley we will see the emergence of multiple carbon consultancies taking up employee time seeking answers to the questions which feed their specific calculations. Sat in large air conditioned city centre offices to be close to their clients with huge data centres crunching the numbers the output will be what is already known to get the supply chain to make efficiencies in resources without putting up the cost as those yet to be embroiled in the pantomime are continuing to do things cheaper.

Hi indeed - some very good thoughts

long haul - glad I will be retired - set the target to 2030 or beyond (give it a Buzz - lol)

Im sure the others will find a away to be constructive with the figures like most companies hide accident figures now - oh 500 days accident free (what about those ***  ) we dont talk about about those ones ..  quick hide that paper..  you will all have come across Boards etc that only want to see, what they want to see "Green" and not "Red" this month, or next month, or the month after that 

as one person has said in their response (or something similar), move the company or parts of it Abroad (hide it)

just keep moving the goal posts, except you might not get a handout from the government, if the grants ever appear again

I certainly wont be able to afford an electric car nor a heat pump, or any other items required to be ZERO (or likewise) on my pension 

There is of course a whole new set of language and acronyms to process.

When I went to school hydrogen was that gas the chemistry teacher filled a test tube with then lit by taper.

Now there is blue hydrogen from non-renewables and green hydrogen from water cleaving - the site proposed for Stanlow will begin with blue then shift to green. As with our national grid carrying non and renewable electricity how are we supposed to account the carbon from differing processes if it is in the same pipe/tanks?

As to renewable / sustainable practice yesterday saw an article proposing a 2,500 km cable to carry solar and wind generated electricty from Morocco to the UK - mind slips back to Physics copper cables carrying current generating heat & magnetic fields potentially running past islands suffering volcanic activity.

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

the enviromental impact of an electric car over its expected life cycle is still a lot less than one with a combustion engine

My smug "green" neighbour is currently eating his version of these words following the admission from Volvo that electric car manufacture has 70% more emissions than a petrol model which take 70,000 miles to off-set.

Technology has a long way to go.

It has taken decades to agree on some international like for like standards for reporting health and safety performance - that are far from including real data on occupational ill health.

So, now we can expect a similarly lengthy debate about how to define Net Zero.

The UK is pretending that it is virtuous, but as has been said on this thread much of the virtue comes from having exported our dirtier industries to poorer countries, but not properly recording the real data associated with mostly large organisations heavily reliant on a long and international supply chain.

P

Edited by user 04 November 2021 19:43:57(UTC)  | Reason: Typo

We have acknowledged it is global issue and individual countries can’t really do much about it . Having some sort of international agreement is a start but most countries will look at trying  to manipulate any controls to their advantage; try telling your electorate that we will be good and suffer changes while we let others off the hook. So until there is world government that controls everything we will be struggling. Of course, any world government  would be lead by someone like Putin or  Xi Jinping rather than Jacinda Ardern, which makes think that global warning isn’t that bad…

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

Most cars are used for more than 70,000 miles

2019 figures show the average UK mileage had dropped to 7,400 so as a ball park 10 years to off-set (two years more than the battery guarantee which does not cover natural charge capacity loss).

Factor in cities becoming less car friendly (those with Clean Air Zones for exmple), changes in working practice (who wasn't on an internet meeting in the last two years), company policy activley discouraging employee high mileage.

With a DFT prediction of @ 5,900 miles for 2020 you suddenly find it becomes twelve years to off-set the original production emissions and you will also likley have the replacement battery to add on.

Conveniently forgetting any emissions from the production and installation of charging stations.

Strange it is fine for me. It is on Nature.com so may look for it through there if all else fails. Title is

Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time

Ok have had the conference and  have been demonstrations demanding immediate radical action to make the world totally sustainable for everyone(probably by harnessing the power of unicorns) but now its time to come up with something SMART- ie Specific – tackles the problem as opposed to looking good on social media; is Measurable – there is an outcome that be measured as opposed to makes us feel virtuous; Assignable – somebody eg a individual, an agency, as opposed to saying “we all play a part”; Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, as opposed to saying “make all of the nasty fossil fuels disappear overnight”; Time-related – don’t just let it drag on fix a date for the specified outcomes and be willing to name those that don’t deliver, who ever they are.

But there is fly in the ointment. Kantar Public, a market research company has done a global  survey which is referred to in this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/few-willing-to-change-lifestyle-climate-survey

Essentially the survey says that most people believe that climate change is real apart from small proportion of  deniers like Owen Paterson(who he?)  but they don’t think that they can do more without sacrificing their life-style and so they think it’s someone else’s problem. This is what is known in politics as a “hard-sell”. Just think how long it took us to make driving belts compulsory or control tobacco; here we are talking about a massive social change which will not really benefit the people alive today but might help their children and their children’s children.

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

Can't see what a "clean air zone" would have to do with being unable to use an electric car, by definition.

In discussing average driver annual mileage I was referring to all drivers, not just electric, therefore a CAZ will have an impact on the overall average driven

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

People just don't seem to understand that we need to change the way we live all the way down. We have to make sacrifices, or there won't be anything left to sacrifice.

As per the article AK referenced people do accept a need for change but how do you convince everyone to do their bit when 1% of the worlds population contribute more to global warming than the poorest half of humanity?

When you look at the aspirational lives influencers and supposed celebrities promote through their social media jetting all over the globe please explain why any mere mortal should cut down?

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

People just don't seem to understand that we need to change the way we live all the way down. We have to make sacrifices, or there won't be anything left to sacrifice.

As per the article AK referenced people do accept a need for change but how do you convince everyone to do their bit when 1% of the worlds population contribute more to global warming than the poorest half of humanity?

When you look at the aspirational lives influencers and supposed celebrities promote through their social media jetting all over the globe please explain why any mere mortal should cut down?

Exactly - not just celebrities though ! World Governments, CEOs, Protestors etc etc and more 

Does it not just make a laughing stock of the whole affair?

Trebor - I will hold my hands up and admit to being a serial reader of the Guardian since I was a student!

But, I do get asked to do surveys, including as to my attitudes to various issues, including climate change. As example, my electricity supplier is ScottishPower. It has a side show called TalkPower who do surveys.

P

Originally Posted by: trebor123

https://www.inentertainment.co.uk/volvo-says-electric-car-making-emissions-are-70-higher-than-petrol/

That is the graph from the article you linked. Electric cars are more damaging initially, but less so over their entire life span, with the greener the energy in the national grid, the better the pay back, which is exactly what I have been saying. Even with the current poor mix it is still 18% more efficient, by Volvo's own numbers. Don't just look at headlines, look at the data.

Also that is based on "global electricity mix" at which the payback is 68,400 miles. With the increase of renewables/nuclear into the national grid over the coming years that will only improve. If we get to the EU-28 targets (although I appreciate that we are not obliged to) it woud reduce the payback to 43,500 miles.

payback or off-setting emissions?

When you get in to payback we enter a whole different set of calculations - cost of car (now actually going up due to increased cost of producing batteries), cost of electricity (massivley gone up due to global energy market), effects of depreciation (viable battery life / outdated charging technology) along with that renewable electricty tarrif attracting a premium price.

Whilst there may be a Benefit In Kind tax break company car drivers often forget that HM gov advisory rate for electric vehicles is stuck at a flat rate of 4p per mile since 2018 meaning BEV drivers are likely to be funding business travel (other advisory rates get adjusted quarterly) eating in to any personal tax saving.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

payback or off-setting emissions?

Paying back the additional emissions that were created during the manufacturing process. I concur I should have used "off-setting", but the point still stands.

Originally Posted by: peter gotch

premium price for renewable electricity? Possibly in England

Yes Peter another one of those "south of the border" anomalies