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Net Zero or Carbon Neutral? What’s the difference?

Posted on April 28, 2023 by dishanth

PAS 2060, a Publicly Available Specification that has been used as a guideline for demonstrating carbon neutrality, makes it clear that carbon neutral should be used to mean all scopes not just scope 1 & 2 (fuels burned on site and in vehicles and electricity consumption). However there has been a growing habit over recent years to use “carbon neutral” to mean just operational emissions – ignoring the value chain (scope 3) even though for most companies between 70 and 95% of their emissions are from the value chain.

To be truly carbon neutral, a company needs to reduce emissions from all sources as much as possible and then offset or actively remove the remainder.

Net Zero uses the same concept but at a larger scale, aiming for emissions from all sources to be reduced as much as possible and the remainder mitigated through removals from the atmosphere. These could be through supporting natural systems which sequester carbon (forest, peat, wetlands, seagrass, etc) or through technology like carbon capture and storage and buried solid carbon sinks.

The ISO 14068 standard will be a certifiable standard that ensures that emissions from all scopes are considered. (Click here to request a link to a recording of our ISO 14068 webinar or a copy of a factsheet.)

As time goes on, we need to be more cautious about avoided emissions (like technology sharing to reduce dependence on wood burning for example) as that prevents emissions that would otherwise have happened but doesn’t actively remove anything. So, it’s more like moving a share of emissions from one emitter to another, but on a global scale we need to be keeping total emissions to a minimum not just reducing in one place and emitting in another. It’s really important to support low carbon international development, but I think we’ll see a change in attitude to the value of avoided emissions in offsetting in future. A simple 2 tonnes avoided per 1 tonne allocated offset credit (for avoided emissions projects only) would work for example, as for every tonne emitted in location A, 2 tonnes are prevented in location B ensuring the overall emissions are net zero.

In short, a company that is carbon neutral is also net zero (calculated on a year-by-year basis), as in both cases the tracking of carbon emissions and removals need to match.

Source edie

Siemens to deliver carbon neutral factory eight years ahead of schedule

Posted on August 18, 2022 by dishanth

Siemens’ Congleton factory manufactures more than 1.2 million controls and drives each year and has been fitted with an array of energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions.

With support from Siemens’ energy and performance services business, Smart Infrastructure, the Congleton factory now generates 75kw of renewable energy through a hydro-electric plant at Havannah Weir on the river Dane. The facility also uses certified carbon-neutral biogas to power onsite engines. A building management system, modern windows and LED lighting have also been fitted to reduce total energy costs by up to 30% respectively.

Siemens believes the facility, which also has EV charging for staff and visitors and is aiming for zero waste to landfill, will become carbon neutral this year. Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.

Andrew Peters, Managing Director of Siemens Digital Industries Congleton, said: “Siemens believes that sustainability is a force for good and can deliver value for all its stakeholders. We want to help customers achieve sustainable growth and to transform their industries through decarbonisation. The first step of that is for us to achieve these ambitions in our own operations.

Siemens’ original 2015 commitment was to ensure carbon neutral operations by 2030.

“I am delighted that by leveraging a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability – the vital components to Siemens’ Congleton’s long-term success – we have achieved carbon neutrality, a major milestone in our ambitions to reach net zero emissions by 2030.”

The company claims that energy efficiency measures have saved around £250,000 annually at time when energy costs are rising quickly.

After setting its carbon neutrality goal in 2015, Siemens began tying executive-level pay to progress against key sustainability targets, including its 2030 GHG goal, at the advice of the board.

It has since joined Amazon’s Climate Pledge and vowed to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.

Amazon’s ‘Climate Pledge’ was launched in September 2019, after the e-commerce giant faced mounting pressure from consumers, investors and its own staff to firm up its environmental ambitions and actions in line with its scale. It worked with non-profit Global Optimism, the brainchild of former UN climate secretary Christiana Figures, to develop the pledge, which is headlined by a 2040 net-zero target, and to open it up to additional businesses.

The company has recently joined the SteelZero initiative. Convened by The Climate Group, which is perhaps best known for its RE100 and EV100 initiatives, SteelZero represents businesses from all parts of the steel value chain. By signing up to SteelZero, companies commit to procuring, specifying, stocking, or producing 100% net-zero steel across all operations by 2050 at the latest.

Source Edie

Hitachi and Imperial College London launch joint venture on climate and nature-based solutions

Posted on July 15, 2022July 14, 2022 by dishanth

Imperial will work with Hitachi and Hitachi Europe to establish a joint research centre that will deliver research projects, reports and white papers on the challenges facing the net-zero transition.

The ‘Hitachi-Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions’ will explore the potential scenarios and pathways of the net-zero transition, with a focus on carbon management, decarbonising energy and transport and enhancing biodiversity through nature-based solutions.

The Centre will also help train the next generation of scientists and engineers in the field. The collaboration will be delivered by senior representatives from both Imperial and Hitachi, including Professor Mary Ryan from Imperial’s Faculty of Engineering, and Dr Kazuyuki Sugimura, CTO of Hitachi Europe.

Professor Ryan said: “There is greater urgency than ever before to tackle global pollution, of which CO2 is one of the biggest sources. This joint research centre will bring together world-leading scientists and innovators in decarbonisation and climate repair to develop new technology and solutions to the climate emergency.

“Imperial and Hitachi will work closely together to make significant advances in developing cleaner energy and this new centre will accelerate our work towards a zero pollution future.”

Professor Ryan also leads Imperial’s Transition to Zero Pollution initiative, which aims to build new partnerships to help deliver a “sustainable zero pollution future”.

As for Hitachi, the company joined the United Nations Race to Zero Campaign in 2020, was a principal partner of COP26.

Hitachi set a carbon-neutrality goal for 2050 that covers the entire value chain, including production, procurement and the use of products and services. It builds on an existing commitment of making all its offices and factories carbon neutral globally by 2030.

Nature-based solutions

There are some key challenges that need to be overcome if nature-based and climate solutions are to roll out at the pace required to help decarbonisation efforts.

Estimates suggest that the current market for offsets will need to grow by at least 15-fold by 2030 and up to 160-fold by 2050, if businesses and nations approach a 1.5C pathway using offsetting to the extent currently planned for. At present, most of the market is accounted for by nature-based projects as the capacity of man-made solutions is smaller. If existing challenges are not addressed, this scaling could bear awful consequences for biodiversity, Indigenous communities and global food security.

Globally, the world is facing an $8.1trn financing gap into nature to help combat the climate crisis and ecological breakdown, according to UN reports that warn that annual investments into nature-based solutions need to increase fourfold by 2050.

The report found that current investment into nature-based solutions sits at $133bn – 0.10% of global GDP – most of which comes from public sources. However, up to $4.1trn is required by 2030, which rises to $8.1trn 2050, a four-fold increase.

Up to $203bn annually is required for forest-based solutions, with peatland and mangrove restoration also highlighted as critical solutions. Marine environment solutions such as seagrass meadows were not covered by the report but will be included in future editions.

The report also estimates that annual investments into these solutions will need to reach $536bn annually by 2050.

Source Edie