Every Estate Can’t Do Everything First

Decarbonising your organisation is a complex task (understatement alert) and cannot be achieved overnight.  It is based on a daunting coordination exercise involving hundreds of individual actions and dependencies, and requires buy-in from a network of stakeholders across different departments.  You can’t do all of it at once.  Which is why prioritisation is essential. 

We know all of this to be true.  So why does it feel like a compromise?  It’s difficult not to feel that you’re letting the side down by not doing everything now.  In the context of the climate crisis, how do you hold your nerve and push actions out by 10 or 15 years?

What’s going wrong?

You have a Net Zero commitment, and the organisation bought in to the idea of fighting climate change.  But the systems and mechanisms to make this happen in your organisation simply do not exist to support such widespread change on a short timeline.

It feels like it’s not moving fast enough.

But why?

Each of the detailed actions and programmes you painstakingly set out in your strategy is dependent on resources, investment and collaboration across departments. 

What is holding you back is not a lack of planning or commitment.  It’s the same challenge that every organisation has.  Everyone is doing their best to deliver Net Zero despite constrained budgets, people’s limited time and divided attention, day-to-day business operations, and complex external pressures.

Is there another way to think about this?

How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Net Zero is simply too big and too complicated to be able to fix all in one go. 

Ambitious, comfort-zone-pushing action plans are great, but only if they are deliverable.  Pragmatic, logical, data-informed choices are always going to win in the end because they are realistic and therefore have a greater chance of being implemented. 

Choosing what not to do yet is one of the most courageous decisions you will make.  It’s counterintuitive, but it’s often the most economic approach.  Your existing assets have inherent value, not just financially, but in terms of their embodied carbon.  To replace them ahead of time is wasteful on both counts.  Getting the most out of the assets you have already invested in is a defensible position, even when it means continuing to use fossil fuels in the short term.  You have not failed if you are using a gas boiler in 2030 – you have only failed if you don’t have a plan to replace that boiler when it reaches end-of-life.  Sometimes the lower-carbon decision over the whole life of the estate is to wait until the time  is right. 

Believe in your pathway.  It is a sound long-term plan based on prioritisation and logic.  Give yourself permission to use gas a bit longer without feeling guilty.  Some actions and investment need to wait their turn.

……Plot Twist!

The climate crisis creates social, reputational, and emotional pressures to do everything on an accelerated timescale.  But every estate can’t do everything first.

The real challenge is deciding what not to do yet.  And being ok with it.