Growing Your Company While Reducing Emissions

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Emission reduction targets are at the centrepiece of any credible green business policy but as many firms are now discovering, setting the right target is far more difficult than it first appears.

With growing numbers of companies having had emission targets in place for a number of years, the realization is dawning that simply setting a 20, 60 or even 80 percent emission target in line with the latest political or scientific consensus can soon result in unexpected levels of complexity followed by significant PR headaches.

What happens to that target if, for example, you acquire a new company, or sell off part of your operations, or even happen upon a new product that goes stratospheric?

You are quickly left with an emissions target that is either unattainable or meaningless -- and a step designed to display an enlightened attitude to corporate responsibility becomes little more than a handy stick with which environmentalists can attack you.

It is a dilemma that became apparent to telcoms giant BT when it began to assess how to apply its emissions reduction target for its U.K. operations to the entire business.

"We set an absolute target of cutting emissions from U.K. operations by 80 percent on 2006-07 levels by 2016," explains Chris Tuppen, director of sustainable development at the company. "We then wanted to set a similar target for our international operations, but the problem was that in 2006-07 we had virtually no emissions outside the U.K. Now we have 200,000 tonnes of emissions from an international business growing at over 20 percent per year, but you can't really set a precentage target for cutting emissions when your baseline is zero."

It is a problem familiar to almost every firm that has set itself an emissions target, according to Paul Dickinson, chief executive of corporate reporting lobby group the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). "People have been really struggling with the idea of how to bring down emissions without surrendering growth," he explains. "There is a sense that if you emit 1 million tonnes and set a target of cutting that by 5 percent that's fine, but if you then go out and buy another company that emits 1 million tonnes, the whole process is stuffed."

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