You’re a Business

Let’s reiterate:

Carbon zero means removing all of the carbon your business has ever emitted into the atmosphere since its inception.

Going Carbon Zero provides you an opportunity to:

1. Launch a bold and credible sustainability action fully aligned with your brand and foundations for growth;

2. Inspire buy-in across your business and beyond; and

3. Win real, significant and sustainable business benefits.

Most people, pretty much every business and 99.9% of the world’s countries (exception – Bhutan), have a poor Carbon Balance Sheet. We’ve all emitted WAY MORE carbon than we’ve removed from the atmosphere. Our insatiable appetite for more “debt” means every year, global carbon emissions rise when we know the opposite is urgently needed

we need to:

1. Rapidly slow our “debt” accumulation by reducing global carbon emissions

2. Re-balance our books by removing carbon from the atmosphere.

The Proposition:

Your business establishes a “Carbon Balance Sheet” and “Carbon Investment Portfolio”, to catalyse unprecedented, innovative Climate Action that:

• ALIGNS with and BUILDS on your strategy to address your customers’ priorities on the environment;

• LEVERAGES your environmental commitment and your investment by bringing others on board;

• CREATES real BRAND and BOTTOM LINE value through exceptional customer engagement, loyalty and employee satisfaction; and

• MAKES you the PROVIDER OF CHOICE in a world that demands credible climate action

How It works - RRRI

Reduce your own company emissions:

• Review and strengthen your businesses own efforts to reduce emissions as rapidly and boldly as possible

Reduce emissions elsewhere:

• Beyond your company, identify projects to significantly reduce emissions elsewhere e.g. girl’s and women’s education, refrigerant destruction, forest conservation, etc

Remove carbon from the atmosphere:

• Invest in programs to remove carbon from the atmosphere with short, medium and long-term return horizons e.g. through improved farming, soil carbon capture practices, forest conservation, tree planting, sea grass rehabilitation, direct air capture technology, further R&D

Inspire your employees & clients and their staff to join:

• Through communications and supporting technology (e.g. an app) engage your people and your broad network of clients and other stakeholders, leveraging your own investment, inspiring a new, innovative approach to tackling the global carbon challenge.

How it works - your Carbon Balance sheeT & Carbon investment portfolio

You need a Carbon Balance Sheet for your business. Below is a simple framing of the Carbon Zero concept. On the left of your “ledger”, you have your lifetime emissions since the inception of your business, your liabilities. On the right, you have your Assets. These are projects that you invest in as part of your Carbon Investment Portfolio. The “Return on Investment” is measured not in financial returns but as carbon emissions reductions or carbon removed from the atmosphere. Your investments can have short, medium and long-term returns to manage risk and all will have significant “co-benefits” such as improved agricultural yields, biodiversity conservation, and improved livelihoods.

You’re an Individual

You can get your carbon out of the atmosphere too!

let’s Get Started…

Just as we can have a Carbon Balance Sheet for businesses (see below, left), we can have one for ourselves too.

To go Carbon Zero you need to have some idea of the total amount of carbon you’ve emitted over the course of your life. This is our “Liability” on the left of our personal carbon ledger, our Carbon Balance Sheet. Here’s how I calculated mine:

Step 1: List all the countries you’ve lived in and for how many years

Step 2: Visit Our World in Data website (see button below) to work out the CO2 emissions for those countries. The chart shows data for 1990 and 2016. Take the per capita emissions data for whichever is highest because it’s important you don’t under-estimate. In the bottom left of the chart, you can search for the countries relevant to you, select them and then the data is displayed.

Step 3: Multiply the per capita emissions for each country by the number of years you lived there (from Step 1)

Step 4: Add all that data and you have a back-of-the-envelope calculation of your lifetime CO2 emissions!

Step 5: Add 20% more just to be as sure as you can be that you’re overestimating.

Now that you have your total “liability”, you can set about your own RRRI process to take your own serious Climate Action. To reiterate, we need to:

• Reduce our own emissions

• Reduce emissions elsewhere

• Remove carbon from the atmosphere

• Inspire others to do the same

To implement your RRRI process, you need your own Carbon Investment Portfolio (CIP). Just as with businesses, you should focus on investing in a range of short, medium and long term projects to create diversity and reduce risk while ensuring important co-benefits accrue to people and the environment from your investment. Tree planting for example, is very long term and with high risks that the trees won’t survive. Thus choosing tree planting projects wisely is critically important - you need the right partner to ensure your investment can be effective. This is true for all Carbon Investment Portfolio projects.

Step 6: Build an Action Plan of personal habits, charitable giving as part of your CIP and volunteerism to get to Carbon Zero.

See below for what my calculation and Action Plan looks like.

My calculation looks like this:

Australia: 30 years x 17.13 = 513.9 tCO2

UK: 3 years x 10.51 = 31.53 tCO2

Vietnam: 6 years x 2.09 = 12.54 tCO2

Switzerland: 17 years x 6.62 = 112.5 tCO2

GROSS TOTAL = 670.47 tCO2

PLUS 20% => 670.47 x 20% = 134.1 tCO2

LIFETIME CO2 EMISSIONS = 804 tCO2

I feel reasonably confident this is an over-estimate as historical emissions in Australia through the 1960s and 70s were lower than today. Nonetheless, I’ve used the figure from 2016. I feel it’s important that I have a higher estimate as I have a greater capacity to take action than people in less developed countries.

My Own Carbon Zero RRRI Actions

I started my own RRRI Actions back in 2015 when I shifted to a predominantly plant based diet. Estimates suggest this will have reduced my carbon footprint by as much as 70%. In addition, I now travel far less by air than I used to (reduced by over 80%) and for a number of years I owned an electric car. Though I no longer have the car, my overall amount of driving has decreased as I work from home.

I joined Kiva.org, a micro-financing organisation in August 2008 and since then, almost 90% of my loans have been to women in the agricultural and education sectors. Project Drawdown estimates that investing in girl’s and women’s education contributes hugely to reducing global carbon emissions. It’s impossible for me to put a number on this in terms of tCO2 reduced, likewise with my reduced flights and driving, but my sense is that it’s significant in terms of my overall emissions. Lastly, much of my work for the past 20 years has been dedicated to forest conservation and stopping deforestation which itself contributes massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere every year.

In terms of removing my 804 tCO2 from the atmosphere, I have invested in a tree planting project through the Trillion Trees organisation in Western Australia. They estimate that the 560 trees I have funded will remove - assuming they survive - 80tCO2 from over a 50 year period. This is why tree planting projects are long-term and somewhat high risk and highlights the importance of partnering with professional and responsible organisations like Trillion Trees. I recently received a video confirming my trees were alive and well.

This leaves me with a further 724 tCO2 to remove from the atmosphere (plus the amount I add each year) to achieve my Carbon Zero goal.

I have identified a project in Cambodia - Husk - where I will invest in soil carbon sequestration through biochar. This is much more short-term, pulling carbon from the atmosphere very rapidly. More information to follow.