How Will I Know If It’s Working?
We all care about carbon in the context of the climate crisis. But it’s so abstract, it’s difficult to engage with as a metric. What if we turned it on its head and looked at carbon savings as a by-product, not the fundamental objective, of our Net Zero strategies?
What’s going wrong?
You set a carbon target, you figure out a strategy to reduce carbon, and then you measure success by calculating savings against the plan. Nobody could criticise that, right? It’s the logical way to do it!
But the problem with reporting your carbon savings is that it only tells you about carbon savings. Nothing else. And the “else” is that bit that your stakeholders are actually interested in.
But why?
Carbon is generated across your whole organisation, from every activity in every department. But conceptually it is difficult to engage with. People struggle to know what it actually means when you report that you saved 100 tonnes of CO2e last year. There’s a big “so what?” that doesn’t get answered by conventional carbon reporting[NB1] .
Is there another way to think about this?
Carbon numbers alone do not paint a picture of the success of your actions. The engaging stories emerge from the outcomes that make people feel better:
A school that is cooler during heatwaves
An estate with lower maintenance costs
Energy bills that are more predictable
Homes that are free from damp and mould
Tangible outcomes are far more likely to get support and investment than those initiatives that present themselves as just for carbon savings, especially when those outcomes tackle fundamental challenges in the organisation. Flipping it round means your stakeholders can see the benefits driven by actions that happen to also reduce carbon. That’s what drives support and makes your net zero strategy more likely to succeed in practice.
If staff are more comfortable, bills are lower, maintenance is easier, resilience is better and the estate is operating more effectively, then something bigger than emissions reduction has happened.
If it’s working, it should feel like it’s working.
…..Plot Twist!
Forget your carbon numbers for a second. What are the outcomes you would love to see across your estate? The ones that would make operations smoother and your people happier? I mean, I don’t know this, but I would be pretty willing to bet they would also bring down your emissions.