Why Carbon Neutrality?
Carbon neutrality is hard to conceptualize at times, but the countless advantages of reaching net zero emissions can easily be seen through numerous business benefits and of course, an improved and thriving environment.
A Thriving Environment For All
At its core, carbon neutrality addresses the paramount issue of preserving a planet to ensure a clean and healthy future for generations to come.
Greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, are a primary contributor to the greenhouse effect, which traps solar heat energy within our atmosphere. This causes a variety of environmental changes, most notably, the general heating of our planet, sea rise, glacial melting, and soil depletion. These effects can severely disrupt our ecosystems, food sources, lifestyles, supply chains, and general economic development.
Corporate Impacts of Climate Change
Extreme weather events will cause widespread utility outages
Loss of productive working days due to extreme heat
Increased prices to access limited resources
Shrinking productivity of harvests causing rising costs of food and cost of living
Relocation of whole towns and cities due to temperature
The Business Benefits
Going carbon neutral will bring impact leadership to your organization and give it a differentiating edge across three primary tangible benefits:
Driving Revenues
There is growing consumer and stakeholder interest in environmental sustainability, and businesses stand to come out ahead when deliberately driving towards carbon neutrality.
The sustainably-minded consumer segment is worth up to $1B in annual spending, and they are avoiding unsustainable businesses in favor purchasing from those that show a real commitment to environmental action.
Reducing Operational Costs
Resource conservation through a carbon neutrality approach increases the monitoring and effective reduction of your business operations, helping to lower costs as a result.
By reducing or augmenting expenditures on energy use, business travel, and other operational activities (thus lowering your carbon footprint), your organization can achieve significant cost savings.
Tax Incentives
In numerous locations, your business can additionally gain from governmental policies created to incentivize impact-oriented practices and functional operations.
Investing in carbon offsets with the right provider, for example, will allow your business to lessen its tax burden, given the deductible nature of many offsets and their parent foundations and organizations.
Outcomes of These Business Benefits
A comprehensive survey of the S&P 500 found that organizations with strong sustainability programs enjoy the following outcomes:
