Many businesses understand the first steps towards decarbonisation. What about second steps?
POB: When you start the net zero journey, the first thing to do is assess your carbon footprint. You have to walk before you can run. You don’t have to start big, we didn’t. Colin Mustoe started the company on his own in the late 1970s and we’ve grown and we’ve always tried to do the right thing. It’s not something we’ve done in the last few years to be trendy. We’ve been doing it 20, 30 years. Baby steps are steps forward. We deliver products, for example, and then we bring back the packaging. We’ve designed our packaging to be reused.
SH: There’s an education piece still needed. It can get complicated but it needs simple steps, knowing what you need to do and what the outcomes will be.
NP: There’s a branding issue with net zero because it’s like a blanket approach for everybody, but everybody’s different. It seems like such a big thing and for some, they get it, it’s easy. But for a services business, what does that mean for them? We use the phrase, a thousand one per cents. You look at your business, look at a thousand things within it. Can you make all of them just one per cent better? If everybody did that, imagine the benefits.
LW: The Green Engage programme is great for all hotels. It shows what you will achieve if you reduce your lighting or your water consumption. They will tie in your profitability. But cost is key. If you don’t have the money, you can’t invest.
AR: Some more mature industries where there are more people retiring than coming through can have the mentality of, ‘Right, well, this is how it’s always been, this is how I was trained, this is what we’re going to do, and we’ll just keep going until I retire’. That culture needs to change. Then there’s end user culture. When customers have a boiler, it will come on for a couple of hours in the morning and then it will turn off. Some older customers think it’s going to cost them more money to shift to a heat pump.
What would be your appeal to policy makers or business leaders?
AR: The government should try and look at funding for heat pump installation.
JB: We need to fully use what we have and to have whole life ownership. Most people who’ve got EVs are leasing them over three years and then
Laura Taylor
they’re moving them on and getting a new one. That is not green. I think you’re conning yourself, and I think the truth is, use what you’ve got.
GC: One wish would be to have an accessible framework for small businesses to follow. People want to do the right thing and they should be enabled to do the right thing.
POB: It’s about engagement. Experts are available at colleges, universities, chambers. Engage with them.
MB: I want the carrot and the stick. The carrot is the funding to work with – grants, subsidies and how about government-backed loans? But the stick has to be proactive, carbon positive procurement policy.
KW: One of the problems we have with this new government is that they’re moving the goalposts and you can see that with the car industry. You had Volvo saying, ‘We’re just going to make EVs,’ and then everyone’s pulling back on that. If they’d just kept with that policy then companies
Professor Karl Williams know where they are, and it applies to everything.
SH: I think it’s enabling businesses to make a start, and make it clearer so at least it can start. They might not be able to have the whole package, but they can start on that journey of doing something.
LT: You have to embrace it because if you’ve always done what you’ve done, you’re always going to get what you’ve got.
NP: You have to have policy, but for the policy to work, we need amazing marketing and branding, advertising campaigns that make it approachable, accessible, and just get people to start, because as soon as you start, you’re on the path.
MD: I’d remove that fear that exists in the business community that net zero and decarbonisation is this mythical beast that’s going to bite your head off and it’s going to be the most expensive initiative you’ve ever thought about. It isn’t, so remove that fear and take those first steps, reach out.
Nathan Partington
Adam Raw
LANCASHIREBUSINES SV
IEW.CO.UK
23
ENERGY DEBATE
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