SharpCloud Training
As the world grapples with the effects of climate change, the imperative to reduce carbon emissions and achieve a net-zero future has become a global priority. Carbon dioxide emissions need to be reduced by 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels and reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Businesses and individuals alike are taking steps to lessen their environmental impact and work towards a sustainable future. Starting your net zero journey may seem like a daunting task, but it's an achievable goal when approached systematically by using a carbon management strategy.
What is Net Zero?
Net Zero refers to when all greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere are equivalent to the greenhouse gases being removed from the atmosphere on a global scale (ClimateSeed, 2021).
What is Carbon Neutral?
Being carbon neutral means the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted is equal to the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere, thanks to carbon sinks such as forests, which absorb and store more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit. (European Parliament, 2021).
What is a carbon management strategy?
A carbon management (or Net zero) strategy acts as a roadmap and plan as to what actions need to be taken as a business to make progress to managing your carbon output and becoming carbon neutral - the strategy is key, particularly in larger organizations, as decreasing your carbon footprint can prove difficult and time consuming.
Net Zero vs Carbon Neutral
Achieving carbon neutrality is when a company has balanced its carbon emissions with funding an equivalent amount of carbon savings elsewhere. Net Zero is a similar concept to carbon neutral, however it goes beyond just carbon and is typically on a larger scale. In other words, net zero emissions will be achieved when human activity no longer causes global warming.
The number of companies publicly committing to net zero carbon emissions has become a meaningful barometer for corporate seriousness about the climate change threat. It’s important to set a carbon-neutral goal that your company can work towards, define what steps fall within that goal and how they can be implemented.
Net Zero strategy
Trying to understand your current landscape is complex...the landscape is constantly changing. Static tools used for roadmapping and innovation cannot keep up and ‘time-consuming to create’ visuals or presentations become quickly out of date. Trying to communicate what projects are needed, which are on track, behind, working, or not working is impossible without the right tools to interpret the endless data at hand.
Many businesses are drowning in siloed data and lacking the insight and knowledge needed to make informed decisions around:
- What initiatives or new capabilities are we trying to achieve?
- How are those capabilities going to benefit us as a company?
- How do we create alignment between cross functional teams and our overall strategy?
- How do we communicate this complexity?
5 Steps to Start Your Journey to Net Zero
So how do you map all the information together to gain the insight you need to answer these critical business questions and move forward in the right direction?
Well we have a free template that could help you!
1. Start with Gap Analysis
Set out your own measures for Net Zero and your Carbon Neutral Strategy to understand your Net Zero gaps and where you need to act. Identify what you want to measure and create your survey to gather information.
Tip: SharpCloud's Forms feature automatically generates a QR Code with a maturity answer format (1 - 5), which you can share as many times as you wish with your community to gather a full picture against your measurement.
2. Monitor progress and engagement on measures
When the responses are in you can begin your analysis – the gaps become visible. Use this ‘whole picture’ view to identify and define the areas to work on first to resolve the gaps.
3. Turn gaps into Strategic Priorities
Your Gap Analysis shows the areas to focus on. Define your Strategic Priorities and Projects and connect them to bigger-picture goals, UN Sustainable Goals for example.
It can be vital to see how everything hangs together and all the connections between your work. Relationships enable you to see project work contributing to the Portfolio and Strategic Priorities and how your actions will return to carbon reduction targets over time.
4. Analyze Project Cost & Proposed Benefit
View your projects, sized by project length, enabling you to see the extent of the activity needed to realize the benefit. Model changes by moving projects in real-time and see what difference it will make to your activity in terms of cost or benefit. You can see related projects and understand the impact of delivery.
5. Build your Carbon Reduction roadmap
Carbon targets and projects to deliver. There is a commitment to halve our emissions each decade if we are to reach the targets for NetZero and limiting climate change. The lower view below shows the reduction of carbon over time. If the line is in the green - it is on track, if it is in the red it is at risk.
See the whole Net Zero picture
SharpCloud has a free NetZero end-to-end solution specifically designed to kick off your NetZero Project. From Gap Analysis, Strategic Priorities, and Projects to measuring your progress against Carbon Reduction, our template will guide you through each step.
Transform and connect your siloed data imported from Excel, SharePoint, and other line of business tools into meaningful information with SharpCloud. Easily upload and bring all your information together, organize and connect it how you want, and change it as needed.
Map and explore data relationships. Create data active relationships to see how data interacts with and impacts other data. Get a greater understanding of interconnected data with the power to focus on details and explore each dependency in-depth.
Focus on the work to be done. Different views let you see the same information from different angles. Use filters to hone in on information - understand priorities, visualize tasks and dependencies and expose weaknesses and risks. Anticipate problems and identify opportunities in a timely, highly collaborative manner.
