Small businesses are struggling to effectively reduce their emissions while keeping up in a competitive marketplace. As shown in a survey by The SME Climate Hub, small businesses are more prepared than ever to fight the climate crisis, but surprisingly, most of the resources to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint are not designed for SMEs (medium and small businesses).
In this time of need, we need to create an ecosystem designed for SMEs to go further and achieve Net Zero.
Don't get left behind
The US and the EU are announcing new important regulations on carbon accounting, expanding the scope of companies having to take climate actions if they want to continue doing business. We are talking about over 50,000 businesses in Europe and every listed company in the United States. But perhaps what matters the most is the obligation to report on their scope 3 emissions, i.e. external: those of their suppliers, their consultants, from the use of their products and the services SMEs provide them.
SMEs are high-impact fast-growing companies, and between the time you read this article and new regulations become effective, many of them will no longer be small businesses. Hence, SMEs need to have access to smart and autonomous tools to start measuring their carbon emissions and understanding what they can improve. Calculating one's carbon footprint is the first step in a company’s sustainability journey.
But there is more at stake. The pressure put on larger enterprises to report on their scope 3 emissions will have a significant impact on their decision-making in choosing suppliers, consultants, and service providers. Measuring emissions already increases trust towards clients. A company showing efforts to report on their carbon emissions and act to lower them will have a huge advantage in the coming business environment.
Find the right resources to achieve Net Zero
After hearing the struggle of small businesses to measure and reduce their emissions and contribute to the fight against climate change, Greencast has developed the first all-in-one decarbonization platform for SMEs. We know that SMEs are high-impact companies and can’t spend all their precious time filling endless sheets about their business activities. By building an autonomous analytics and reporting tool for climate integrating with the business software that’s already used internally, Greencast calculates carbon emissions and pinpoints the largest sources of emissions. This way, businesses can easily report on their carbon footprint and show proof of their commitment to sustainability, so crucial to attracting Gen Z talents and investors.
Heavy carbon audits are a real headache for SMEs, mostly resulting in unusable resources not designed for them. With Greencast, after instantly measuring your emissions, you can start analyzing where they actually come from. All this on the same dashboard, not factory-type software. Automated carbon accounting reports and reduction scenarios help their customers communicate to partners, investors, and teams on how they plan to achieve Net Zero.
However, even with the best efforts, there are still emissions companies won’t be able to reduce. Either since it would put them out of business, or (mostly) because it depends on external actors. This is where Regreener comes in. Regreener helps businesses make a positive climate impact by funding carbon removal projects all over the world, reducing global carbon emissions, and creating high-quality jobs.
Aftermath
At this point, the information might be a bit overwhelming. Let’s sum up the key points we saw in this article. First, about the context:
- SMEs are more than ever willing to contribute to positive climate actions;
- However, small businesses lack well-designed tools and resources to act effectively;
- Regulations are coming fast, and many SMEs are facing high challenges to remain competitive.
We clearly understood the importance of achieving Net Zero businesses, and especially for Small and Medium Enterprises. Next, we explored what would be the most efficient way to achieve Net Zero while not wasting resources and money on tedious data collection and analysis:
Measuring carbon emissions: this is the first step in every business sustainability journey. Greencast offers an autonomous carbon accounting solution, using machine learning to measure and analyze your footprint;
Analyzing emission sources: in order to create a reduction plan, companies need to be able to understand where their emissions come from to tackle them efficiently and not waste their resources on less carbon-intensive activities;
Reducing: after understanding their carbon footprint, companies can choose sustainable alternatives to reduce their emissions such as carbon-neutral delivery for e-commerce or implementing zero-emissions cloud solutions for software businesses;
Offsetting: in addition to the reduction target functionality available on Greencast, Regreener helps you take climate-positive actions in your company, and communicate to your customers, partners, and employees to create a business-friendly emission reduction plan. Finally, you can use Regreener to offset the emissions you can’t reduce from your business.
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