No one sector is responsible for solving the challenge or seizing the opportunity of Net Zero. Shared knowledge and collaboration between industries is fundamental.
Imagine you are the chief marketing officer of a global fast-moving consumer goods company, such as a clothing or footwear brand. The business is thriving in the US and UK with ambitious plans to grow and dominate in the Middle East, China and Africa but there is one pressing question from your CEO. The company is going to throw its marketing budget behind a single, global, brand ambassador. There is a shortlist of two and the choice is yours: Donald J Trump or Greta Thunberg?
Much discussion of the relationship between brands and their consumers accepts the broad principle that consumers are the ones to make a choice and that a brand should take steps to make themselves attractive to those consumers.
This remains true, but today we live in a world of ‘affective polarisation5’ – meaning that we identify strongly with our ‘tribe’ and dislike the ‘other’ tribe, even if in practice we don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of their traits or preferences.
In the UK, the obvious example is Brexit, with most individuals defining themselves as either a Remainer or Brexiteer. The reality is that moderates in rival camps have more in common on specific issues than differences. We identify as ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’ and the strength of our feelings towards ‘them’ becomes increasingly intense. Brands also face a choice along these lines. And while you may not actually be caught between the choice of using Greta Thunberg or President Trump in your brand activations, as a consumer brand you are being pushed increasingly to identify with one of those two camps.
In fact, consumers are going to demand nothing less. Two-thirds of consumers want brands to take a stand on the issues of the day6.
The nuance for brands is that, although marketeers won’t express it so bluntly, this means rejecting customers as much as it means attracting them.
Rather than thinking of consumers choosing brands, we are entering an era when brands are choosing consumers. And this is an incredibly important strategic commercial decision.
Footwear brand Nike illustrates both the opportunity and risk that come with this new consumer landscape. In 2016 NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick ‘took the knee’ during the American national anthem. In the resultant cultural conversation, Nike explicitly and triumphantly backed its man. It picked a side, and knowingly faced down furious protests from the ‘others’7.
Within this era of cultural, tribal self-identification, sustainability and climate is a big deal. Major brands need to pick a side.
More often than not, the decision to use a brand to champion sustainability and to restructure supply chain and logistical operations accordingly is driven from non-cynical motives, not a marketing drive.
But it’s clearly also a commercial decision, if for no other reason than you can’t do good work if you’re out of business. So a smart brand leader wants to know that the tribe it ‘chooses’ has some spending clout. That’s an opportunity that can be turned to commercial advantage.
For brands that choose a sustainable purpose, the signs are good. Last year, researchers found that sustainability was a main driver of growth for the consumer-packaged goods market8. Half of that market’s growth from 2013 to 2018 came from sustainability-marketed products. Tellingly, products marketed as sustainable grew 5.6 times faster than those that were not.
These products win because the audience is growing – Nielsen recently found that a whopping 81% of consumers globally want companies to help fight climate change9. Unsurprisingly, this is most important to Millennials, an admittedly broad bunch of people, but one expected to have faster-rising spending power than other demographic10 - making them particularly attractive to global FMCG brands.
At the same time, it’s easier to be Unilever if you are the only Unilever. If everyone is in the same space, brands need another way to stand out. And a position of virtue is far easier for a disruptive new brand borne of sustainability, than it is for a heritage brand trying to make a difference. Businesses will also have one eye on China, India and Africa to see how their decisions are likely to play out there.
For all that, brands are piling into purpose and sustainability. And faced with the evidence we have, as well as the very real climate issues the world faces, that’s got to be a hugely positive development and one that could help save the planet.
2020 will be the year when climate-risk analysis becomes a mainstream feature of capital markets, with investors and company boards taking climate-related disclosures increasingly seriously in investment decisions.
Investor pressure will be the key driver in shaping how institutions view climate risks. Investors are being more and more discerning when it comes to how their investments will impact the environment, with mainstream asset managers now offering a range of sustainable funds. Consumers, particularly Millennials are looking for ways to invest more sustainably and providers are responding to these demands. Accordingly, companies are shifting from a more traditional, limited view of managing their environmental impact to a broader, more transformative approach.
Profitability is still critical. Investment must still be focused on projects which have high potential for success, not least because shareholders will continue to demand strong returns on invested capital. However, the sector is increasingly focused on ensuring that finance must also address climate transition and inclusive growth while achieving and sustaining those returns.
There are still many complex choices and decisions to make as the transition to decarbonisation continues – many of which will be increasingly dictated by shareholder priorities. In a 2019 poll by ClientEarth11, 60% of UK adults felt that financial institutions and banks should be legally accountable if they chose to invest in fossil fuels. While the finance sector may not divest from fossil fuels fully in the immediate term, we will see investors increasingly calling on and supporting their clients in finding ways to reduce their carbon emissions and become more sustainable in their production and supply chains. Central banks are introducing metrics for measuring climate risks among investment portfolios and, in the UK, the Bank of England is leading the way by introducing stress-testing of the financial impact of climate change from 2021. Nonetheless, wholesale change requires regulatory cooperation, and despite increasing action on the part of businesses, boards and investors need coherent standards and systems to quantify green investment. Regulatory alignment will be high on Mark Carney’s agenda after his move from the Bank of England to become the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action. Another critical element in driving incentives to channel capital to low-carbon solutions and powering innovation is certainty on the price of the cost of carbon - whether through a cap and trade system, a carbon tax or other means.
In 2019, the European Commission proposed a framework to consistently integrate sustainability considerations into the investment process by setting out criteria for sustainable economic activities – known as the taxonomy. Under the EU’s proposals, investments classed as sustainable economic activities must contribute substantively to environmental objectives such as reducing pollution, or prevention or protection of water and marine resources. The technical criteria for climate change mitigation and adaptation are due to be agreed by the end of 2020. It is hoped that these will boost sustainable asset investment and prevent ‘greenwashing’ of unsustainable financial products.
In the UK, the Treasury published its landmark Green Finance Strategy in July 2019, setting up a Government-led cross-regulator taskforce to build on and implement recommendations on climate-related financial disclosures which will apply to all listed companies and large asset owners by 2022. Work is also ongoing to reach agreement on an international standard; the EU and several partner countries launched the International Platform on Sustainable Finance in October 2019 to coordinate on approaches and initiatives, such as taxonomies, disclosures, standards and labels.
Even with the policy frameworks still under development, growth in green finance is booming. The commercial incentives for businesses to invest sustainably - and the pressure imposed upon them by their shareholders to do so - will only increase in the years to come.
Consumption and the circular economy is the story of re-manufacturing, recycling and innovating to reduce the carbon impacts of products. 'Circular economy' is not a new term, but the catch-all nature of the phrase has meant it has not always been readily understood. The concept dates back several decades, through initiatives such as ‘cradle to cradle’ or ‘closed loop’ calling into question the negative impact of commerce, the excessive use of resources, and addressing challenges of waste and landfill. While there is no one definition to the term, a circular economy’s foundations are built upon extending the life of products; of waste prevention through reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling; and the recovery of materials. There are very real pressures driving a move to a circular economy: not least finite natural resources, and carbon intensity of extracting large volumes of raw materials and intensive manufacturing processes. Within the EU there has also been an appreciation of the risk of ‘carbon leakage’ with factory relocations to countries with lower labour costs and less stringent regulatory frameworks. An economy based on circularity therefore provides solutions to crucial environmental challenges and can contribute to rethinking our broader economic model and its social impact. At EU level, the European Commission proposed its first Circular Economy Action Plan in 2015 to help stimulate circularity, foster sustainable growth, and generate new jobs. This first plan focused heavily on revising the existing waste framework, considering recycling targets, management of waste streams, and placing greater responsibility upon producers. A true circular economy, however, encompasses far more than waste management solutions. Elements such as optimising product design to reduce waste are crucial - including considering durability, ‘repairability’, and material selection. Similarly, there is value in creating demand for recycled products, be it through content mandates or educating the wider supply chain and public to appreciate waste as a resource. There are questions which need to be resolved as we move towards a less resource intensive economy. Not all products have immediate substitutes and recognising this is important in establishing where to focus efforts in driving products and processes for a circular economy. The Critical Raw Materials list developed by the EU aims to prioritise resource efficiency of those materials that are of significant economic importance, have a high supply-risk and a lack of viable substitutes – helping to identify areas for funding and research programmes. Equally important is work on the chemicals-products-waste interface, looking how to best track chemical substances across the supply chain and throughout the recycling process, to ensure consistent quality for consumers. Through this whole system view, regulators and industry can better ensure maintenance of environmental and health standards for recycled products – for all consumer products, but particularly for food contact materials and toys.
Printing
Imaging and technology group Lexmark has become widely known for its cartridge collecting and remanufacturing. Most cartridges that are collected are remanufactured, changing some parts of the product to return it like-new and under warranty.
Increasingly, we are seeing circularity embedded in the core of many companies throughout the value chain, from production to end-of-life. Business models are being developed around the presumption of products and materials being given a second, third or fourth life, which presents exciting new strategic opportunities for businesses to remain relevant in a changing environment. The combination of public awareness and increasing regulatory focus means that this is the time for companies to seize the opportunity of circular economy thinking. As more and more innovative reusable and renewably sourced products are coming to market, closing the loop can become progressively easier. About 45% of global emissions13 come from creating the items that we use every day, so transforming the way we make and use products is key.
Fashion
H&M Group sees developing circular economy solutions as intrinsic to meeting its ambition to become climate positive by 2040. Accordingly, it encourages re-wear, reuse, recycling and upcycling through its garment-collecting initiative, and is investing heavily in new technological solutions such as new fibres to simplify recycling. In 2019 the business collected 29,000 tonnes of unwanted clothes for rewear, reuse and recycling – approximately equivalent to 145 million T-shirts. This was an increase of 40% on 2018 volumes.
‘The key to our future is, therefore, to ensure that we move away from an old, linear and environmentally hazardous system to a circular one that ensures long-term environmental and social sustainability. Big leaps towards new and greener solutions are usually taken by companies and countries that are developing and can, therefore, invest in technological innovations. As such consumption that contributes to both reducing global poverty and enabling investment in modern, sustainable production is not the problem, but instead part of the solution.’
Karl-Johan Persson former CEO, H&M Group
Technology Apple is on a bold mission to make products without mining the earth. The company is focusing on emission reduction throughout the supply chain, smarter chemistry, and resource efficiency – including exploration of material efficiency, product longevity and recovery, as well as zero waste. Initiatives include the Full Material Disclosure program, in which Apple’s suppliers provide information on the chemical substances within the parts and materials used in their products, to ensure compliance to regulatory requirements, corporate initiatives, and to support assessment of the impact to human and environmental health. The company has also developed ‘Daisy,’ a second-generation disassembly robot, to remove and sort components from iPhones in order to recover more material at a higher quality. Most of the aluminium recovered from iPhones, for example, becomes part of the 100%-recycled aluminium enclosure of the MacBook Air12.
‘I think it’s really important to go beyond what’s required and start asking what’s possible.’
Lisa Jackson, Vice-President Environment, Apple
Delivering stretching targets to drive change in a business cannot be done in isolation. Buy-in from customers, suppliers – and critically – from staff across the whole organisation will make or break ambitious plans.
It is vital that even before targets are officially set, business plans consider innovative ways to engage the key stakeholder groups which need to be brought on board as part of the invention and delivery of the solutions.
For sectors like food & drink, packaging and plastics present a central challenge, and this is heightened as we begin plans for economy-wide Net Zero. Even with transportation and processing factored in, use of recycled materials is far less carbon intensive than production from virgin plastics. A 2017 study demonstrated that recycled PET delivered 79% lower carbon emissions than new material, far exceeding previous assumptions. Effort to work collaboratively across the entire plastics value chain has already begun in the UK via the Plastics Pact. This brings together a common set of targets to drive innovation, research and new business models to rethink and redesign packaging and how re-use of packaging can be boosted. Though companies are moving to recycled plastic, UK volumes of recycling do not currently meet the demand. Driving public behaviour change is therefore vital for business strategy. Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS) is the UK’s third largest branded soft drinks supplier in the UK, with brands including Lucozade Energy, Lucozade Sport, Ribena and Orangina. Ribena was the first UK soft drinks brand to use 100% recycled plastic in its bottles and LRS has committed to make all bottles from recycled plastic or plant-based material by 2030. In the following case study, the company outlines how lessons learned from engagement on wider sustainability workstreams are informing its plans for reaching its ambitious plastics target.
Suntory’s founder, Shinjiro Torii, had a saying: Yatte Minahare. It means to think big, to take on the largest challenges and never ever give up. Simply, it translates as “Go for it”’.
Lucozade Ribena Suntory’s ‘Growing for Good’ vision encompasses the company’s commitment to reducing its impact on the environment and encouraging consumers to do the same. This mission is threaded through its operations, and extends to engagement with fruit growers, suppliers and customers.
Delivering sustainability and efficiency is, of course, fundamental to core manufacturing processes. LRS’s factory in Coleford, Gloucestershire already meets the highest international standards of environmental management (ISO 14001). Last year, the company announced a £13m investment to install a high-speed bottle-filler at the factory. Producing 1.3 million bottles a day, the new line reduces the amount of water and energy required to produce each bottle by up to 40%. Working towards delivery of its science-based target of a 25% reduction of CO2 by 2030, LRS has also consolidated its distributions centres to give an estimated annual saving of 1.09 million transportation miles a year and 1.56m kg of CO2.
Finding innovative products that work for customers is critical. Work towards the company’s 2030 target to move fully to sustainable plastic bottles (from used, recycled or bio-sources) has already seen the replacement of 46,000 bottles at running events with seaweed packaging alternatives, and a successful trial of a new light weighted 500ml Ribena bottle which will save 325 tonnes of plastic being produced each year. LRS is also redesigning its bottles to enable an increase in bottle-to-bottle recycling and is supportive of a Britain-wide deposit return scheme to bring quality, used plastic back to manufacturers. Bringing the story of the value of sustainable supply chains to consumers is also extremely important to LRS. Ribena’s blackcurrant growers are committed to increasing biodiversity across 35 British farms and their 4,000 acres of land through LRS’s Environmental Farm Stewardship Scheme. Annual pick-your-own blackcurrant days across the six-week summer harvest mean that the public can see first-hand the impacts of the Biodiversity Action Plans designed with LRS’s agronomist. Feedback has shown that these visitors really value this opportunity. LRS also partners with organisations which can bring further challenge and creative thinking to how the company can deliver and engage the wider public. Recycling at home and kerbside collections have improved over the years, but the rate of recycling on-the-go is still low - in the UK around 5.5 billion plastic bottles and 2.7 billion drinks cans are thrown away annually. Given the strategic role recycled materials have in driving a circular economy and in meeting plastics targets, shifting the public’s behaviour is incredibly important.
Image: https://www.lrsuntory.com/sustainability
LRS has been using fun and innovative approaches to drive behavioural change through its partnership with environmental charity Hubbub. The latest regional pilot initiatives to kickstart the conversation around on-the-go recycling has seen bubble-blowing bins and eye-catching art installations placed across regional city centres, and the installation of new recycling points in local offices, shopping centres, universities, hospitals and transport hubs. In Leeds alone over 160,000 plastic bottles were recycled across a one-year trial with the #LeedsByExample campaign reaching 18.8 million people on social media. Building a circular economy is impossible without understanding and influencing the value chain – from supplier to consumer. Ultimately all players in production must collaborate to deliver a decarbonised carbon future, and that means helping support positive consumer behaviour change through all company activity. Working in harmony with people and nature lies at the heart of LRS’s business, and ultimately enables LRS to provide great-tasting drinks that people can feel good about.
For the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, the impact of climate change is twofold – responding to the increased risk of certain diseases and conditions and decarbonising their own processes and products to prevent worsening impact. Observable effects of climate change are already being felt – for example, the Lancet’s 2019 report on the infection rates of dengue fever (expressed as vectorial capacity for transmissions) showed that nine of the ten most suitable years for transmission on record since 1950 have occurred since 2000. In 2018 there were 220 million more heatwave exposures affecting older populations increasing risks of heart and kidney stress and disease and stroke. Yet, paradoxically, developing and delivering solutions to these challenges has a climate cost. Analysis has suggested that combined CO2 emissions from hospitals, health services and medical supply chains across the OECD group of market economies plus China and India comprise 4% of total global emissions footprint – greater than either aviation or shipping.
The NHS has been found to produce 5.4% of England’s total carbon emissions. For healthcare providers, challenges lie in areas such as transport, building efficiency and waste reduction – where high-quality waste products in operating theatres that could be recycled largely end up being labelled as infectious clinical waste and are incinerated at a high financial and environmental cost. Similarly, some procedures are particularly carbon intensive. Hospitals have been exploring solutions ranging from retrofitting heat recovery technology to dialysis machines, to switching operating room anaesthetics, which account for almost a third of the UK’s health and social care sector emissions, to less-polluting gas. Linked options include introducing technology to capture these gases and seeking alternative clinical techniques. There is a clear role for industry to support healthcare providers through innovative product design. Boehringer Ingelheim recently introduced the first reusable, propellant-free inhaler for patients with asthma and COPD, supporting objectives of carbon and plastic waste reduction. An associated study suggested that the reusability of the inhaler reduces its carbon footprint by as much as 71% and should mean that over a million fewer inhalers are needed annually.
image: https://www.mddionline.com
The challenge of producing sustainable medicines is also being explored by the Innovative Medicines Initiative. The scheme represents Europe’s largest public-private partnership in life sciences, between the European Commission and the European pharmaceutical industry. Its €26.m (£21.2m) CHEM21 project brings together six pharmaceutical companies, thirteen universities and four small and mid-sized enterprises from across Europe to develop sustainable biological and chemical alternatives to finite materials, such as precious metals, which are currently used as catalysts in the manufacture of medicines. To minimise wider environmental impacts, efforts are being made to introduce biotechnology to the manufacturing processes for medicine production. Nonetheless, it is critical that pharmaceutical companies retain a focus on driving decarbonisation and best practice sustainability in-house as well as in product design. In 2015 the global pharmaceutical industry produced 55% more CO2 than the automotive industry14. The NHS Sustainable Development Unit’s 2018 National Resources Footprint15 stated that pharmaceuticals are the second largest producer of both water footprint and carbon emissions (12.1%) relating to the healthcare service in England.
Novo Nordisk has set itself the objective of powering its global production with 100% renewable energy by 2020; a target which they announced they were on track to achieve in 2019, after investing $70 million in a 672-acre solar panel installation in North Carolina. The company also puts emphasis on tracking carbon emissions at each step of the value chain, from manufacturing to transport, distribution and product disposal. In 2019 the group announced a new target of achieving zero CO2 emissions from all operations and transport by 2030. The goal is part of a new and ambitious ‘Circular for Zero’ environmental strategy, which aims to minimise consumption and turn waste into resources, design and produce products so that they can be recovered and re-used and collaborate with suppliers to embed circularity in its supply chain.
"By committing to achieve zero emissions across our operations and transport by 2030 and by applying a circular mindset across our entire business, we are working towards a day when we will be able to say that Novo Nordisk is a company with zero environmental impact."
Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO, Novo Nordisk
The shift to a far more rapid rate of decarbonisation across the pharmaceutical industry and the broader healthcare sector will require significant action. But trends have shown that focused efforts can deliver results on decarbonisation, and indeed can be delivered alongside economic growth and expansion of service. In the NHS emissions from health and social care have been cut by 18.5%16 since 2007, despite clinical activity rising by over a quarter over the same period. Interestingly, the report on global pharmaceutical performance17 demonstrated that the companies leading on emissions (Amgen, Johnson & Johnson and Roche Holding) were also three of the most profitable in the sector. This is clear proof that there is economic opportunity in innovating for the future.
‘Smart’ is the buzzword of the modern age – applied to phones, cars, televisions, energy grids, factories and more. There is a clear role for smart systems and big data solutions in driving operational efficiency – and reducing emissions. Big data has helped us understand the impact of global issues – identifying the rate of habitat loss; locating harmful emissions; finding pressure points along the supply chain. The World Economic Forum framed this transformative change in the capability of data as an intrinsic part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another critical tool. Research by PwC UK, commissioned by Microsoft, modelled the economic impact of AI’s application to manage the environment across four sectors – agriculture, water, energy and transport – and estimated that AI could reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 4% in 2030. This is equivalent to the 2030 annual emissions of Australia, Canada and Japan combined. Microsoft has dedicated $50m over five years through its AI for Earth programme, which has already supported over 450 grantees across more than 70 countries, giving people working on environmental challenges access to their cloud and AI tools.
The biggest efficiency gains and emissions reduction benefits from AI are expected in energy and transport, but - as is the case with all meaningful steps to decarbonisation – these cannot be applied in isolation. For example, AI-enabled distributed energy grids are most effective in combination with infrastructure such as distributed generation and storage, underpinned by dynamic pricing and smart meters. Similarly, there will be missed carbon savings in introducing AI-enabled autonomous vehicles without policy environments which promote ride-sharing and clean vehicles. But the story of technology and emissions is more complex than simple good news. Data usage is growing at speed: between 2012 and 2018, the number of data centres worldwide has grown from only 500,000 data centres to more than 8 million18. The amount of energy used by data centres continues to double every four years, meaning they have the fastest-growing carbon footprint of any area within the IT sector.
Companies are responding. Facebook has set a goal to support all of its operations with 100% renewable energy in 2020 – and, critically, to ensure that renewable energy projects are in the same electric grid as the data centres they support– showing how the sector can spur further renewable energy investment. In 2018, the company became the largest corporate buyer of renewable power in the world and as of today, has contracts in place for more than 4.6 GW of renewable energy. Given its commitment, Facebook is a founding member of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance and a member of RE-Source and RE100, a global initiative of influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. The company has also created new energy tariffs in collaboration with local utilities and others, enabling other businesses to also purchase more clean energy. As growing numbers of businesses and individuals start interrogating their supply chains and considering their full carbon emissions, the carbon footprint of data will come under increasing scrutiny. The nimble technology sector, with its history of entrepreneurs delivering cutting edge innovation to market, seems well-placed to lead the charge.
Delivering economy-wide Net Zero needs a collaborative and all-sector commitment to change. Fundamental to this however is the infrastructure underpinning this: how we source our energy and clean our industrial processes. In many respects energy, manufacturing and technology sectors have led the charge in decarbonisation and have proven themselves to be innovative and responsive to the challenge. With bold new targets – including new ambitions for carbon negativity from companies like Microsoft – companies from all sectors need to acquaint themselves more fully with the opportunities and challenges which come from different future pathways. The three most often-discussed solutions to greening our power, heating and transport are renewables, hydrogen and carbon, capture usage and storage (CCUS). Renewables growth is a positive story. Across the EU the quantity of renewable energy produced increased by 64% between 2007 and 2017. Solar and wind power costs have plummeted to the point where they are cheaper than coal in most of the world, and in many countries subsidies have proven successful enough that developers are increasingly able to build profitably without or with significantly reduced support.
Widespread electrification supported by renewables seem like a clear route to decarbonisation. However, technologies like wind and solar still have intermittency issues which can present challenges to meeting demand - a problem which will only increase as more people want to charge their Electric Vehicles and heat their homes via heat pumps. Battery technology is advancing, but not quite fast enough to meet the scale of ambition of full decarbonisation through renewables. Options like nuclear, which provides stable clean power, and gas, bioenergy or energy from waste plant with CCUS, will also have a role to ensure consistency of power supply. Explained simply, CCUS is the CO2 produced from fossil fuels in electricity production and industrial processes, and either storing it in aquifers, for example, or recycling it for industrial use. CCUS will be fundamental to the greening of manufacturing and industrial processes. The technology is still relatively new and various hurdles exist in areas such as how the means of transportation of captured carbon would be financed. Industrial clustering around planned CCUS projects will make increasing economic sense for manufacturing, and indeed some aspects of food production – such as greenhouses using waste heat as well as waste CO2. The potential for the use of hydrogen in heating and transport is also regularly raised as a solution to decarbonisation. There is certainly strong appeal in heating – in the UK for example using the existing network and retrofitting of existing gas boilers means a less significant departure from infrastructure than some heat pump options, particularly ground source heat pumps. From a transport perspective, the current efficiency performance makes it less appealing for cars, but it could still be a possibility for haulage, which can better accommodate the large fuel cells. It is also being actively explored for decarbonisation of aviation. A current limitation of hydrogen is the energy-intensity of its production – which of course has a knock-on impact on demand and how we manage the electricity grid. Furthermore, if we are serious about decarbonisation, producing hydrogen with anything other than renewables (‘green hydrogen’) does not seem like a sustainable approach. At the very least an approach reliant on CCUS (‘blue hydrogen’) will be needed.
Governments have to make major decisions about national infrastructure plans, based on which technology route they choose to be the dominant model. A one-size-fits-all solution will obviously never work; hard-to-reach communities and geographical differences will always mean exceptions to the national ‘norm’ but businesses do need to understand the main rules of the game in order to apply solutions in time to meet Net Zero and drive further invention. These are some of the most challenging yet most important choices in a generation. And they cannot be delayed. Recent research in the UK19 suggested that more than 4000 EV charging points and heat pumps would need to be deployed every day over the thirty years to 2050 to meet the country’s Net Zero target. Real action is needed now. More critically it is important that companies for all sectors understand the implications that these technology choices could have upon their supply chains and operational costs. Any company setting a Net Zero or emissions target needs to make sure it understands the macro-level energy strategy at play in its market. Understanding the wider landscape is business-critical for all sectors. You can only plan for the bottom-line impacts and benefits by having a stake in the bigger Net Zero debate.
