World Environment Day has prompted us here at Gong to reflect on the issue so many businesses are grappling with at the moment: How to get to Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions using science based methods as fast as we can? In December last year at COP25, alongside 499 other B Corps, Gong pledged to get to Net Zero by 2025 at the very latest. Spurred on by Covid and the imperative to Build Back Better, we are determined to do it this year.

Unlike the growing number of multinational corporations and manufacturing businesses who have pledged, it’s relatively easy for a small service business like ours to figure out our carbon footprint and make the necessary reductions. But there are ‘hidden’ emissions, even for us. We’ve learned for example, from fellow B Corp Wholegrain Digital, about the relative energy intensity of different web site constructions (if the internet was a country, it would be the world’s sixth biggest polluter). So we’ve committed to curb bad digital communications habits along with obvious things like reducing international travel, buying renewable energy and sourcing as much as we can from other Net Zero B Corps.

177 multinational companies, including Nestlé, Unilever and Vodafone signed up to the UN pledge to be Net Zero by 2050. That figure has continued to grow through 2020. Sustainability heads at businesses are working flat out to reduce their own emissions and track those of their suppliers (referred to as different ‘scopes’ 1,2 and 3) but many are facing up to the fact that they will struggle to change their current business practices enough to get to net zero in the time available. And this isn’t an arbitrary date. We have by best estimates, nine years left to act on carbon concentrations before we irreversibly head into warming that exceeds the ‘liveable’ 2°C target set in Paris.

As we have been thinking about this, we’ve started working with a new client which has given us the opportunity to delve further into the carbon removal movement. It’s been an eye opener which is why we want to share it. Human carbon emissions total 40 gigatonnes per year (Gt/y). Earth (forests, soil, oceans) can only absorb 20 Gt/y of this hence the concentration of greenhouse gases keeps increasing. So even though emissions have been lower during lockdown, CO₂ concentrations are still rising.

Experts, including The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the UN IPCC are encouraging us to look at carbon dioxide removal (CDR) rather than offsetting. Sustainability expert John Grant explained that when you buy offsets, you are often funding a project that produces or uses energy more efficiently, but emissions still occur. It doesn’t reduce the already too high concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientific removal and lock-up of CO₂ now, for a minimum of 50 years, will give us time to shift to a less CO₂ intensive world and mitigate climate change.

The WRI says ‘2020 could be the year Carbon Dioxide Removal takes off.” UN IPCC (2018) says: “All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) of the order of 100–1000 Gt CO₂ over the 21st century. CDR would be used to compensate for residual emissions and, in most cases, achieve net negative emissions to return global warming to 1.5°C following a peak.”

This week, another company, Climeworks announced that it had raised $76m to expand its operations to ‘suck’ CO₂ out of the air and turn it into products such as gas for carbonating Coca-Cola. While this particular use of CO₂ makes it back into the atmosphere, other Climeworks processes do store CO₂ permanently. But we are encouraged by a different (and healthier) approach, espoused by our client PURO.earth that supports businesses whose core processes are carbon net negative. In other words, they use carbon dioxide in the manufacture of building materials such as ‘carbstone’ and biochar soil improvers – two sectors – construction and agriculture – that are big enough to be able to scale rapidly to really make a difference.

Craig Sams, one half of the pioneering duo behind the original fairtrade chocolate brand Green and  Black’s, set up biochar company (and B Corp) Carbon Gold. A former Chair of the Soil Association, Sams is an evangelist for the regenerative properties of biochar on soil.

And for anyone who needs the science, here’s a helpful video about CO₂ mineralisation of waste materials from steel manufacture in the production of sustainable construction materials.

What’s exciting is that we can remove CO₂ now by paying companies like these to scale faster by buying carbon removal certificates through the PURO.earth marketplace. We get to be net negative now, which means that Gong is no longer going to be part of the problem. Of course it still needs the global construction industry to use more of these products and for farmers and cities to use biochar instead of polluting fertilisers. But with the momentum from the Build Back Better movement and the European Green Deal stimulus, it suddenly feels like there is real hope that we can find solutions that are also going to build a new green economy and ecosystem of entrepreneurs.

And that’s good for everyone. Happy World Environment Day.

There is something about the sustainability pioneer John Elkington’s new book, Green Swans; The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalismthat brings joy as one scans the contents pages. The title unapologetically riffs off the idea of Black Swans – the extreme, the unknown, and very improbable events – described in a book of that name published just before the global financial crisis of 2008.

The twitch at the corners of the mouth when you read is less to do with the subject matter – though this is ultimately an inherently optimistic read – and more because of the fun that John has obviously had with the analogy. Halfway into the book, there’s a section called ‘New Pecking Orders’ – he’s really in his stride now – with sections called ‘Incubating Ugly Ducklings’ and ‘Exponential Migrations’.

All levity aside, Green Swansputs our current challenges into context by setting out the very serious ‘Black Swans’ that we currently face including: Plastic in the oceans, killer calories and climate change. Despite the complexity of the issues, it is not all bad news, mostly because the book is packed with John’s anecdotes and his clever aggregation and framing of ideas about how and where remedies are likely to appear.

The book draws from themes derived from the work carried out by Volans, the future-business consultancy which John co-founded, in its inquiry series: Tomorrow’s Capitalism. The Inquiry kicked off with a recall of the Triple Bottom Line mid-2018, the first ever ‘product recall’ of a management theory. In a blog on Harvard Business Review, John called for re-think and withdrew People, Profit, Planet, concluding it was longer fit for purpose. Together with his colleagues at Volans, he sought to reboot the concept identifying the ‘3Rs’ as its worthy successor: Resilience, Responsibility, and Regeneration are the vital characteristics, Volans argues, of the business systems of the future.

Despite the gravity of the issues, John manages to keep the text from getting too weighed down. He talks about how during his long career as an advisor to CEOs and embattled leaders, he has often used humour in Boardrooms as an unexpected tactic that gets people to drop their guard and focus on unpalatable truths.

The book is packed full of references that resonate reassuringly for businesses grappling with formulating their own response to the emergent future. And while the Covid-19 pandemic rages all around us, there is something strangely calming in thinking that this Black Swan event could end up giving flight to some very welcome and significant Green Swans.

As the book notes, “For the foreseeable future, this will be by far the biggest opportunity for adventure, growth, and evolution in the tightly coupled stories of humankind, capitalism, and our home planet, Earth.”

Green Swans, The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism, was published on 9 April by Fast Company Press and is available to buy on Amazon or direct from the Volans website.

We were thrilled to be appointed by Granger Reis for two reasons: Human capital is a big theme for us at Gong and international boutique, Granger Reis has a global perspective on sectors that we operate in: Infrastructure, Real Estate, Construction and Mining being the main focus areas where we have track record.

The Granger Reis team have challenged us to capture and communicate the key insights and issues that drive their business to reflect their deep expertise. From diversity and inclusion to courageous leadership in times of exponential change, the issues couldn’t be more familiar or more prescient.

grangerreis.com

2020 got off to an inspiring start with an event from our new client, Volans, whose ‘Tomorrow’s Capitalism: The Inquiry’ on 10^th January saw initial insights of 18 months’ research shared with an invited audience of business leaders, regulators and industry associations to explore what it means to step up as leaders in the 2020s: a period of exponential change. The inquiry launched in 2018 with John Elkington’s recall of the Triple Bottom Line. The rationale being that business and ‘sustainability’ as usual is no longer fit for purpose.

Hosted at Aviva’s conference suits in the City of London, the audience heard from Inquiry partners including The Body Shop, SEPA, Covestro, Unilever and Aviva as well as leading experts in related sectors such as supply chain and the future of food.

Volans identified three defining elements of the emerging corporate leadership agenda to help businesses become catalysts for systems change:

1: Collaborate to build ‘3R’ businesses: Businesses should be adopting the 3Rs framework: “Responsibility”, “Resilience” and “Regeneration”. These are the characteristics required to thrive in a challenging, complex commercial environment and they require significant innovation and self-disruption.

2: Change the conversation between business and finance: This is about much more than ESG scores and sustainability reporting: the task is to create deeper partnerships between corporations and investors to co-evolve a whole new approach to investment and finance that emphasises outcomes and ‘directionality’, not just growth.

3: Become a Political Activist: There is no apolitical path to a sustainable economy. Progressive corporate leaders are being called on to step forward and engage in the tricky business of influencing policy and public opinion.

Read more about Volans’ work and the Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry here.

In January, we were called on to support Circle Gas, a start-up that is revolutionising energy access for clean cooking in Africa. Circle Gas was announcing the acquisition of proprietary technology from Tanzania’s KopaGas in a transaction worth USD 25 million. The deal was the largest pure private equity investment in the clean cooking technology sector to date.

In parallel, Alok Sharma, the UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was in Nairobi for an event focused on investing in tech innovation and since DfID was an early supporter, Circle Gas was naturally in the media spotlight.

Circle Gas is helping to address multiple SDGs at the same times as it provides a reliable and low-cost supply of LPG fuel for clean cooking to low-income households by using innovative smart metering and advanced distribution logistics. LPG displaces the use of harmful and dirty charcoal and kerosene in the home. This reduces respiratory problems for women and children while reducing the felling of trees that would otherwise be used for firewood or to make charcoal. About 900 million people, or 70% of the population of sub Saharan Africa have not yet transitioned to clean and modern cooking fuels.

Read more about it in this Reuters feature. 

circlegas.co.uk