Sustainability has become a top topic to address in the last few years, both for businesses and individuals. In fact, 90% of business leaders think sustainability is important, but only 60% actually have a sustainability Strategy. The demand for tangible action is becoming more pressing as we inch close to the 2030 milestone of the Paris Agreement. To encourage action from businesses, we’re seeing more public and private sector contracts include a tendering requirement to show your commitment to sustainability. One such example is the need for a PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plan. In this weeks’ episode David Algar, Principal Carbonologist® at Carbonology, joins Mel to explain how to create a Carbon Reduction Plan, shares some top tips on presentation and how Carbonology® can support you. You’ll learn ·       How to create a Carbon Reduction Plan ·       How Carbonology® can help you align that plan with ISO 14064 and PAS 2060 ·       Addressing difficult tendering questions ·       How to best present your Carbon Reduction Plan Resources ●      Carbonology ●      Book a call with David Algar ●      A quick Guide to creating your PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plan   In this episode, we talk about: [00:24] What are PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plans? – Go back and listen to our previous episode to learn more.   [00:42] Episode Summary – Today we’ll be talking about how to create a Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP), how to deal with difficult tendering questions and the best ways in which to present your CRP.    [02:46]  How do you actually calculate the emissions? We have gone into this in a lot more detail on a previous episode, but to summarise:- Emissions are calculated by taking your activity data, such as kWh of electricity, or miles driven in a vehicle, and multiplying it by an emission conversion factor. Specific emission conversion factors are available from DEFRA for specific activity data, they are also year-specific. The hard part is sourcing your activity data, accounting for missing information, performing estimates, and ensuring the overall methodology is accurate. This is all done in alignment with ISO1464-1, as well as the PPN guidelines, so one of the very first things we’ll do with you is define your organisational and reporting boundaries, [05:27] How can a business set carbon reduction targets and forecast emissions? This is tricky as it involves trying to predict the future, not just in the short term, but potentially several decades ahead depending on your goal.   The good thing is you know the end destination of your carbon pathway: little to no emissions by 2050. Using this and some simple maths you can at least map out where you should be each year when moving forward from the base year, the base year being the period you use to compare future results against. Usually the base year is the first year you complete calculations, but this can change over time. We’re finding some clients are opting to change their base year to account for the disruption of COVID-19 on operations [06:40] How do you actually set the targets?: When we look at target setting and emission forecasts we generally take 2 approaches: Milestones: ·       The first, and our most common approach, is about setting milestones based on specific carbon reduction initiatives the business can implement, at specific dates. ·       For instance, all company vehicles being hybrid by 2025 and fully EV by 2035? Or what if we phased out gas by a certain date? Or cut out all single use plastics? ·       Using this milestone method for the forecasting can be tricky, but you can end up with a carbon pathway that is more representative of real life.  Straight line method: ·       The second is what we refer to as the ‘straight line’ method. This is a simpler approach that involves doing some simple maths to plan out your carbon targets for each year, without factoring in specific milestones or events. ·       We refer to this uno