Climate Change Project
Developing and facilitating a climate change taskforce
We worked with a purposeful transport company for over 2 years to help them develop their climate change strategy and roadmap to Net Zero. This is especially challenging for a transport company, whose core product of buses and trains is a key contributor to carbon emissions. The need for ULEV fleet transition is clear; but how that occurs and how that is financed whilst keeping the company and its people healthy is a complex challenge. We worked with passionate senor members of the business via a Climate Change Taskforce to develop their climate change strategy, roadmap to Net Zero, and help them develop their science-based targets.
What we did
We were asked to facilitate their dormant Climate Change Taskforce and over a 6-month period develop a climate change strategy that could be submitted to the Board for approval. We helped them identify their material issues and agree their scope of work. This included reviewing and presenting to them their current impact and approach to climate change. This led to agreement of their material impacts and the set-up of their key work-streams, each with a senior lead from the business tasked to create a plan of action for how they could transition their areas of responsibility into a low carbon future. The transition fundamentally changes the norms of how business is conducted, from changing investment pay-back periods, planning how vehicles are maintained, how bus stations are designed and built, and how climate change events are better identified and flagged so that impact can be monitored and quantified for better costing and resilience building.
We supported the leads and worked closely with the Head of Environment to bring in specialist help when needed, such as decarbonisation of premises and BREEAM consultants, or decarbonisation of the bus fleet and statisticians and experts on hydrogen and electric busses. Meanwhile, we also set up a best practice approach to management and governance, including embedding climate change impacts into risk registers, developing an additional set of KPIs that each operating company had to start reporting on, and establishing a governance structure through to the Board.
Outcomes
The approach we took was to encourage senior members of the company to take ownership of the strategy; all the planning and calculations done was validated by the people who would have to do the work over the next 10-20 years. Thus, it was practical, realistic, appropriate, but also ambitious and stretching. The strategy was approved and final calculations were done to develop the roadmap to Net Zero, with an external consultancy preparing the submission pack for science-based targets validation. The work was validated by SBTi and the strategy is recognised as best practice in the sector. Our client has won new business and reputation as a result of the strategy. Further work includes a centre of excellence for net zero, innovative waste and circular economy projects, and development of 'model stations and premises' for decarbonisation.
