Resources and Next Steps: From Our Net Zero Journey Panel
After our panel event 'Your Net Zero Journey and The Team You Need', we put together an information pack for attendees. Here we've distilled the practical guidance and key resources so you can use them whether you're just starting or deepening your strategy.
1. Reducing Emissions — Where to Start?
Scope 2 emissions can fall quickly: switch to 100% renewable electricity and combine it with behaviour change around energy use. For buildings, heating without fossil fuels is achievable — heat pumps, storage, and radiant panels — but upfront cost and lead times mean planning for 5–10 years depending on the asset.
Scope 3 sits in your value chain but is far from fixed. You can address it through behaviour incentives for colleagues and clients, decarbonising fleets and encouraging lower-carbon travel, and — most importantly — collaborating with value chain partners to lower embodied emissions in products and services. Many organisations can reduce scope 3 more steeply than they first assume.
2. Put Climate Justice at the Centre of Your Plan
Indigenous peoples and communities in the global South are hit hardest and fastest by climate change while having contributed the least to global heating. If your organisation uses carbon offset or removal projects, be careful: some of the biggest land grabs in history have been done in the name of carbon removals, funded from the global North but implemented in the global South.
Organisations such as Survival International, the Climate Justice Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, and Climate Just (UK) can help you put climate justice at the centre of your climate strategy and avoid harm while pursuing reductions.
3. Address Climate Risk
If you haven't yet, now is the time to start. Consider your supply chain and stakeholder network: what happens if climate change disrupts travel, transport, energy, water, or causes sea-level rise? Ask whether you are part of the transition to a decarbonised economy or at risk of being left behind or holding stranded assets. Embed climate risk alongside other business risks rather than treating it as a side issue.
Frameworks and Standards
Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) — The leading corporate science-based net-zero standard; align reduction targets with 1.5°C. Near-term and net-zero targets can be validated through SBTi.
Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) — Risk and disclosure framework to shift finance from nature-negative to nature-positive; aligned with TCFD.
Science Based Targets Network — Extends SBTi to nature and earth systems; includes the FLAG (Forestry, Land and Agriculture) project for land-dependent sectors.
Property and Law
Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) — UK requirement for privately rented property to meet at least EPC rating E (and likely to tighten); applies to non-domestic property from April 2023.
The Chancery Lane Project — Collaborative initiative producing contractual clauses for climate solutions, ready to incorporate into precedents and commercial agreements.
Better Business Act — Campaign to change the Companies Act so directors align duties to shareholders with people and planet.
Practical Resources
Business in the Community — Includes nature stewardship and seven steps for climate action, with practical examples.
WWF Corporate Blueprint — Goes beyond science-based targets to integrate climate and nature in corporate strategy.
Carbon Literacy Project — A day of learning on climate, carbon footprints, and action; used by BBC Children's and many others to embed climate as a core competence.
Engagement tools — Do Nation, Giki Zero, and Pawprint can help involve your team and add some fun to your sustainability journey.
Full Event Pack
The full Panel Event Information Pack from September 2022 — with speaker takeaways, further links, and guidance — is available as a PDF: Your Net-Zero Journey and the Team You Need (Panel Event Info Pack).