The changing climate on decarbonisation at COP26

The changing climate on decarbonisation at COP26

On Sunday 31 October, the UN’s Formal Convention on Climate Change met in Glasgow. It’s the official meeting of UNFCCC parties, otherwise known as the Conference of the Parties, or as you will have seen in the news by now, COP.

The event marks the 26th?meeting of the parties, but it also holds extra significance in that it’s being held on British soil. It will assemble the largest single meeting of politicians, businesses, lobbyists, and environmentalists solely to talk about the climate emergency.

Two hundred countries will be asked for their plans to cut emissions by 2030, based on the 2015 Paris Agreement commitments. The UK has just recently published its comprehensive?Net Zero?strategy, which for all of us in business was very well received. It gives us a ‘north star’ to work to and builds on the Government’s Ten Point Plan and Plan for Growth.?

Climate change is no longer a fringe subject; it now forms the central tenet in our strategic planning for infrastructure, heat, energy, and transport in this country for the next 100 years.?

For all parties, businesses and regions, COP will set the level of ambition needed and the eyes of the world will be on Glasgow.?

Principles at the heart of Net Zero

I’m often asked, how we’ll achieve net zero; how we’ll decarbonise the sectors of heat, transport and energy, and how we truly start to ‘eat the decarbonisation elephant’, even if it is one nibble at a time?

When I started my career as a young engineer, I always believed in two things – the first stemmed from my engineering outlook and the second from where I grew up.?

The first was (and still is to this to this day), if a system or process can be measured, it can be improved. It’s something I’ve never been able to shake even from the early days of designing overhead reclosers for GEC.?

And the second, that waste (in all its forms) is the number one enemy for an engineer, and I’ve always pushed myself to ask, could we do X, Y or Z faster, could we use fewer resources, could it be lighter, more cost effective, could it be safer? Productivity is always the missing ingredient to sustainability in industry and, by definition, if?you’re leaner, quicker and less reliant on resources, you’re more sustainable.?

The Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership has launched its?Bee Net Zero?website, which has a simple ten-point guide to help businesses make a start on the decarbonisation journey. Since Siemens joined the Science Based Targets Initiative, we have committed to a 15% reduction in scope 3 emissions – which includes the use of our products by our customers and emissions associated with our supply chain – by 2030. As our scope 3 challenge encompasses our entire value chain, this means that our targets are now our suppliers’ targets as well; forming closer relationships with our supplier partners is vital if we are going to deliver on our promises.

Of the six million registered businesses in the UK in 2020, 5.94m of them were small (0-49 employees) with a further 36,100 being classed as medium (50-249 employees). For these businesses, the biggest hurdle on their decarbonisation journeys is undoubtedly capital expenditure.

A sense of equity

The second guiding principle for me is equity. It forms one of the key pillars of our ESG commitment at Siemens and part of our?DEGREE framework, focusing on decarbonisation, ethics, governance, environment and equity.?

Our road to net zero hinges on embedding the principle of equity in the coming years, but it also moves the emphasis of any green policy to the people it will not just benefit, but the ones it has the potential to leave behind. The net zero transition is everyone’s plan, or no one’s plan.?

A rising tide should lift all ships, not just the people able to afford?EVs, air source heat pumps and A+ plus rated homes.?The transition must embody a sense of fairness – to deliver for people in fuel poverty, to lower fuel bills for those struggling to pay and to not penalise people who choose, or need, to keep older combustion-powered cars or gas boilers beyond 2030.?The Energy Research?Partnership believes that over 40% of the CO2 reduction scenarios identified from now until 2050 involve changes from consumers, customers, and society. In this race, everyone must cross the line together.

COP26 will be pivotal for the coming years. It will give global governments the opportunity to put in place harder measures on carbon and emissions. It will also accelerate the work we, at Siemens, are doing in this country, with our local enterprise partners, regional mayors, and central government. It can be the catalyst that propels headlines into costed, tangible actions, levelling up the UK and creating the regional prosperity we all deserve.

COP26 is about starting to do what’s necessary, then what’s possible... and only then will we find we’re doing the impossible.?