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Businesses aim to get green travel policies on track

Posted on January 17, 2024 by dishanth

New survey reveals four out of five SMEs intend to take steps to encourage employees to embrace lower carbon travel options.

Over 80 per cent of UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) intend to increase their support for lower carbon business travel through corporate travel policies and budgets for 2024.

That is the headline finding from a new survey of over 500 decision makers at businesses with fewer than 250 employees commissioned by Trainline Partner Solutions, the B2B arm of Trainline.

The survey found nine in 10 UK SMEs expect to boost travel expenditure this year, while 92 per cent expect to see levels of business travel increase.

However, at the same time 83 per cent intend to strengthen their travel policy and/or financial support to make it easier for employees to opt for lower carbon travel modes in 2024. Specifically, 48 per cent are planning to use rail more to help reduce their emissions from business travel.

The survey also found 52 per cent of respondents have already set targets for reducing their emissions from business travel – and of those SMEs that have no such goals, two-thirds think it is likely their company will set a target this year.

“Businesses are telling us they expect to both travel and spend more this year as business travel continues to rebound post-Covid,” said Andrew Cruttenden, general manager at Trainline Partner Solutions. “We’re seeing a clear signal that sustainability considerations are a growing factor in setting travel policies and budgets, and rail is a great way to reduce the carbon emissions for travel versus flying and driving. Carriers and travel partners must ensure they can meet this growing demand by innovating and investing in the right tech that helps make rail a simple and seamless option for business travellers.”

Most businesses have slashed travel-related emissions in recent years, after the covid pandemic triggered widespread use of video conferencing platforms. However, business travels are expected to continue to recover this year, prompting calls for businesses and policymakers to incentivise wider use of lower emission forms of travel.

For example, the Climate Perks campaign has called on companies to offer employees extra days off if they use rail for their holidays, while green groups have repeatedly called for businesses to eschew the use of short haul flights wherever rail offers a viable alternative.

However, efforts to encourage wider use of rail have been hampered by the relatively high cost of rail compared to flights, with a Greenpeace analysis last month pointing to how popular rail routes across Europe over the festive period were on average 3.4 times more expensive than equivalent flights.

As such, campaigners are continuing to call on governments to introduce new policies and taxes to curb the availability of short haul flights and tackle the price differential between rail journeys and flights.

Source – BusinessGreen

Think small to fight climate change

Posted on November 29, 2021 by dishanth

When applied to droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, or other extreme weather events, the term “unprecedented” is getting old. In August, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report about the dire realities we face, a drought exacerbated by global warming already had been raging for years across much of southern Africa.

It seems as though world leaders are finally ready to take meaningful action, but there’s a critical group regularly missing from key climate meetings like the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow: local, climate-focused small businesses that already are making a difference in their communities. Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) working on climate adaptation and mitigation are a crucial but underestimated partner in the fight to reduce emissions.

Even though climate financing options are increasing, SMEs’ role in sustainable development continues to be overlooked. Their predicament is one shared by more than 200 million SMEs of all types in developing countries that cannot get the funds they need to grow, facing an estimated US$5.2 trillion annual financing gap.

International investors focus on getting dollars out the door through larger deals, while local capital is kept on the sidelines by high collateral requirements and unmanageable interest rates for early-stage businesses.

SMEs represent 90 per cent of businesses and provide more than 50 per cent of jobs worldwide according to the World Bank, so they have a key role to play in creating opportunities in economies struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Examples like SELCO India, a pioneering off-grid solar company, and Husk Power, an innovative pay-as-you-go renewable energy provider operating in Asia and Africa, show that with the right amount and type of financing and technical support, small businesses can improve lives through energy access – a key international goal. Off-grid renewables also help power sustainable mobility in both rural and urban settings.

Small businesses also have an important role to play in greening agriculture. Land use for crop and livestock production accounts for 24 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and farms are vulnerable to droughts, floods, and rising temperatures. Financing climate-smart agricultural entrepreneurs is essential for making our food systems more resilient.

Here, too, off-grid renewable energy has become indispensable, providing power for irrigation, processing grains, and operating the cold rooms and coolers needed to store dairy products, fresh seafood, and fruits and vegetables. In India, Technoserve is helping small farms withstand and adapt to the climate crisis and raise their productivity without increasing emissions.

As these examples show, when small businesses have the financing and support they need, they can drive economic growth while mitigating emissions and supporting adaptation to climate change. That is because small businesses are more agile and adaptable – and respond to local needs much faster and more effectively – than large organisations. They also offer governments and policymakers an opportunity to try out new ideas, revealing both pitfalls and best practices before initiatives are scaled regionally or nationally.

For starters, the world needs far more finance vehicles and instruments that are tailored to small businesses working in the green economy. That means a mix of lower-cost, long-term capital and blended finance, as well as easier access.

Achieving the global goal of net-zero emissions requires policymakers, investors, banks, and others to attend to SMEs’ needs much more effectively than they have in the past. For starters, the world needs far more finance vehicles and instruments that are tailored to small businesses working in the green economy. That means a mix of lower-cost, long-term capital and blended finance, as well as easier access.

The world also needs more business accelerators focused on adaptation to climate change. There are only 25 such green accelerators located in non-OECD countries. Funding research and establishing professional networks will drive support to businesses that have strong growth potential.

Better metrics to assess success will be needed. That does not mean lowering environmental, social, and governance standards. Instead, it means devising indicators specifically for green enterprises in the SME sector to help them demonstrate their effectiveness and attract more investment.

Finally, investors must not overlook women, who produce up to 80 per cent of food in the Global South. Women also are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Investing in female climate entrepreneurs benefits the climate, food production, and overall prosperity.

Small businesses are integral to climate-change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Providing them the financing and support necessary to help them succeed is in everyone’s interest.

Kristina Skierka is CEO of Power for All. Richenda Van Leeuwen is Executive Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.

Source Eco Business

How to Transform Sustainability from an Empty Promise to the Guiding Star of Businesses

Posted on February 23, 2021 by dishanth

In the wake of Trump’s presidency and amidst the coronavirus pandemic, it is no surprise that people’s trust in the government is at a new low. As the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals, many people are looking to businesses to solve the societal and environmental problems they no longer believe the government is equipped to confront. Despite this transfer of trust from government to businesses, most businesses are not living up to this new responsibility.

Big corporations are hostages to growth and wealth creation. There is no getting away from the fact that they are hooked, addict-like to feeding on numbers. Despite all the evidence, despite all the talk of a new corporate consciousness being awakened by the monumental challenges humanity faces, the profit card continues to trump the purpose one.

It is not that big businesses can’t have a purpose, they can. The issue is that they are simply not ever going to be fit enough to deliver a purpose. They are simply the wrong kind of beast. Meat-eating wolves don’t become grass-eating sheep though they can do a pretty good job of dressing up like them – some of the time.

That is where Single Organizing Idea comes in. As we all know, business as usual is over — the world of work has changed. Businesses without a greater purpose beyond profit are increasingly being called out, struggling to respond or simply failing. While business leaders know that the pressure on them needs to be urgently addressed, few have the tools or systems required to deliver the kind of changes being demanded. Adding to the complexity, and despite best intentions, too many consultants and advisors are using outdated or fragmented models that do little to address the immediate issues, or deliver the long-term systemic changes critically needed. Single Organizing Idea (SOI®) was created to solve this problem.

SOI® is a strategy tool and management system. First conceived in 2005 by Neil Gaught,

SOI® is the culmination of many years of obsession with the challenges facing the business world and the inadequacies of ‘purpose’ to address those challenges.

Purpose is a tarnished old idea that is being promoted by out-of-date, noisy, attention and lobbying reliant big businesses who are themselves no longer fit for purpose. Businesses possess an array of unique attributes and the potential to make a huge contribution to all our futures. They will fail us in this regard, however, if we expect tacking on a CSR team or sustainability campaign, without altering the profit-centered structure of the rest of the company, to have any significant impact.

SOI® allows companies to discover their true, sustainable potential, then embed it at the heart of their mission and actions. By operating at the intersection of their economic and social strategy, these businesses thrive while simultaneously creating sustainable progress for all. The days of businesses doing the bare minimum to appear as though they care about more than just profit are over. The innovative potential of business is unparalleled, we must simply provide businesses with the tools to combine their strategy for growth with their strategy for benefiting people and the planet.

Source Single Organizing Idea