Learnings from our net zero journey

Last week, we published our second annual update to our Net Zero Framework for Action.? Like many organisations, we’re learning how to reshape our operating model, so it’s fit for a net zero future.?Our Director of Economic Opportunities, Suzanne Sosna shares some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way.?

Embedding change can be hard?

"The idea behind publishing our new Net Zero Framework for Action back in 2021 was to more visibly up our game.? We wanted to mark the urgency of doing more to tackle climate change and nature loss and for Scottish Enterprise to publicly commit to this.??

While Scottish Enterprise has championed low carbon market opportunities and business sustainability practices for well over 25 years, this often suffered from being perceived as a fringe activity.?We knew that to make it mainstream we needed to embed net zero across the whole organisation – so that ‘net zero’ became everyone’s job.?

Essentially, this has been about shaping internal culture change, and it has taken some time and perseverance. The challenge has been around finding ways to integrate net zero measures and objectives into our business as usual, so that it’s woven in and not something extra. In this way, we’ve integrated net zero into the support we give the businesses we work with and the economic development projects we develop and deliver. To help us all understand the terminology and concepts around climate change, we’ve trained over 70% of staff so far in climate literacy.??

Beyond the low-hanging fruit?

Many organisations have made a strong start on reducing their carbon footprint, with the general shift to hybrid working reducing staff travel and office floorspace.? Scottish Enterprise has in fact already exceeded its 2025 target of reducing its emissions by 70% compared with its 2015/16 baseline.?

But we know that this is the relatively easy stuff.? Turning down thermostats, switching to renewable energy supplies and installing LED lighting are the low-hanging fruit.? What about the pickings that are hard to reach or seemingly unreachable??

This is the key challenge that Scottish Enterprise faces today.? While it’s great that emissions from car travel have reduced significantly as we take the train instead and use more digital communications, those ‘saved’ emissions now show up digitally in terms of video calls and additional servers.? Similarly, while some international meetings can go online, attracting new investors to Scotland still relies on the detailed conversations and trust developed through face-to-face meetings, collaborations and negotiations. We now need to look at our digital footprint as well as our physical one and seek ways of improving this impact.?

One of our biggest challenges relates to the portfolio of industrial buildings that we manage pending sale or lease to a new occupier.? These properties tend to be less energy-efficient and require a level of investment in insulation and heating that stretches the outer limits of our annual budgets. We need to find imaginative and innovative solutions to these issues in both cost-effective and sustainable ways.?

Beyond carbon?

While decarbonisation is clearly an essential element of the net zero transition, it’s not the whole story.?Nature-based solutions will need to do a significant share of the heavy lifting by absorbing perhaps 20% – 30% of Scottish emissions. Also important will be circular manufacturing processes that will help drive productivity growth by re-using the materials already available. We are increasingly considering these questions in the work we do and are lucky to be able to learn from the many partners and companies we work with as well as through our own efforts and research.?

While we’re now scaling up our action in these areas, we’re finding there are conflicting messages for companies.?For example, many of the tools on offer to help businesses on their net zero journey are still limited to carbon, including many kite marks/standards such as the SBTi and Race to Zero initiatives.????

The ways in which climate change-related issues are communicated to companies very often misses the mark too.?In our experience, businesses need to see the tangible benefits before they’ll take action.?Judgmental language, vague appeals to corporate goodwill and worse, scaremongering, do little to engage businesses positively.? While we still have a long way to go to help companies embrace wider aspects of sustainability, we’ve learned a lot about how to use evidence and business-relevant language to make progress.?

Understanding where we can make the biggest difference?

A final area where we’ve learned a great deal is around understanding how Scottish Enterprise can increase its impact in meeting net zero goals.?Over the last two years we’ve looked at the carbon footprint related to the delivery of our economic development support across Scotland and have discovered that this easily dwarfs our internal organisational footprint.?We are continuing to refine our modelling and aim to use the results to help increase the carbon efficiency of our operational delivery. In 2022/23, we worked to deliver 341,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions reduction through the businesses and projects we supported.???

This has led us to think about how we can extend our influence in delivering positive change.?While as an economic development agency Scottish Enterprise has a distinct role in supporting businesses across Scotland, every organisation has customers, suppliers and employees who make changes in their operations and behaviours.

We’re building on our long-standing commitment to linking our funding to the adoption by businesses of fair work practices.?Our new Values First approach takes this a step further, targeting our financial support toward purposeful businesses who are aligned with the goal of creating a fairer, greener and prosperous Scottish economy.?Crucially, our conditional funding approach is about supporting businesses to become more competitive, future-proofing their operations and helping them attract customers, investment and employees.?We want more companies to realise these benefits and that’s why we offer a range of practical support to help companies to adopt fair work and net zero practices in their day-to-day operations, including our Fair Work Tool and Net Zero Accelerator . These free, online tools enable companies to better understand where they are on their journey, providing practical solutions to work towards better fair work practices and net zero.??

Looking to the future, we have identified eight priority actions for 2023/24 in our annual update to the Net Zero Framework for Action , and will keep working on learning more about how we can move yet more quickly to a net zero future."