Helping You Reduce Your Company’s Carbon Footprint
The recent COP30 climate conference stressed the importance of focused climate action – especially from the world’s smaller and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Energy usage and carbon emissions is a major responsibility and makes up a key part of your environmental, social and governance (ESG) planning, management and reporting.
Let’s look at climate action, Australia’s Net Zero goal and three simple steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint as a small business.
To do our part in combating this trend, the Australian Federal Government recently announced its Net Zero plan, with a five-point focus for achieving 62-70% emission reductions by 2035.
The Australian Government is focused on 5 priorities:
- Clean electricity across the economy.
- Lowering emissions by electrification and efficiency.
- Expanding clean fuel use.
- Accelerating new technologies.
- Net carbon removals scaled up.
Steps for cutting your carbon footprint
You might not think that your business can make a tangible difference to climate change. But when 98% of Australian businesses are small businesses, there’s real power in the small business community taking action to combat global warming and climate change.
Here are some simple steps you can take:
Switch to renewable energy sources:
By making use of small-scale technology certificates through the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme you can reduce the cost of installing rooftop solar panels. This helps you switch to a more renewable energy source while also potentially reducing your energy bills.
Switching to a renewable energy provider will also help you cut Scope 2 emissions.
Change to local suppliers and supply chains:
Prioritise local sourcing for raw materials, ingredients and services, where it’s feasible to do so. This shortens transportation distances, reducing any Scope 3 emissions generated by supply chain logistics and freight.
Review emissions, set goals and monitor usage:
Conduct a regular audit of all your energy and fuel consumption to establish a baseline carbon footprint. You can then set SMART goals for reduction and actively monitor your progress against these emissions and energy goals.
If you’re concerned about your business’s carbon footprint and want to do more to cut your emissions and reduce the company’s energy usage, come and talk to us.
We can work with you to set core reduction goals, track your progress and find the best routes to government grants and funding for energy reduction measures and investments.
