Private sector businesses could achieve 60% of the cuts in global emissions pledged at last year’s COP21 summit in Paris, a new report issued by We Mean Business has claimed.
The ‘Business End of Climate Change’ report, published today to coincide with the opening day of this week’s Business & Climate Summit in London, offers what’s labelled a ‘Business Determined Contribution’ to climate action.
This contribution mirrors what was pledged by countries in their National Determined Contributions made following last December’s summit, and would represent a total emissions reduction of 3.7 metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030.
We Mean Business has estimated this would be the equivalent of switching off more than 1,000 coal-fired power stations.
The Climate Group’s RE100 campaign contributed towards the report and assumed that as many as 3,000 businesses across the world would derive 100% of their power from renewable sources by 2030 as prices fall.
This, the RE100 suggests, would create a “ripple effect” throughout supply chains and customer bases, triggering even further decarbonisation.
Emily Farnworth, RE100 campaign director for The Climate Group, said: “The potential for initiatives, like RE100, that encourage and help accelerate the take up of renewable power is exponential. The reach of the current group of companies goes far beyond the walls of their own factories, offices, data-centers and stores and will create a ripple effect through their supply chains, customers and clients.”
The group’s analysis comes as a host of new companies joined the initiative, including Spanish bank CaixaBank, Belgian retailer Colruyt and the Italian owners of Venice and Treviso airports SAVE S.p.A.
While Colruyt already sources 100% of its power from renewable sources and has done since 2010, it wishes to go one further and produce all of its own power via renewables by the end of 2020.
“On the one hand, we want to decrease the impact of our own (business) activities: saving energy in everything that we do, remains one of the most important goals.
“On the other hand, we firmly believe that we can save costs – which is an essential part of our way of working. We took the engagement to make our energy as sustainable as possible, and since 2012, we have added the goal to become 100% self-sufficient.
“It also makes us more independent, which puts us in a very interesting competitive position as a retailer,” Stephan Windels, business unit manager at Eoly, Colruyt Group Energy, said.
Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer at IKEA, which is itself a member of the RE100, said that decarbonising was a “shared responsibility” amongst businesses, investors, individuals, cities and regions alike.
“Action on climate change is not only the right thing to do, it brings business benefits. For IKEA Group it’s a driver of innovation, renewal and an opportunity to make our business better,” he said.
