Climate Change
PRACTICE AREA LEAD
3Keel helps organisations at all stages of their climate change journey: from getting an initial understanding of their total climate impact through to tracking progress against targets and communicating results.
Understanding climate impact and risk
For many clients, the first step in acting on climate change is understanding the key sources of emissions across their business and value chains: from the goods and services they purchase, to energy used in their own buildings and the downstream emissions associated with how their products and services are used and disposed of.
Many of the 3Keel team has been delivering these sorts of analyses since 2005 and have helped shape the development of leading standards in this area – including the GHG Protocol, ISO14064 and the product carbon footprinting standard PAS2050.
Importantly we are experienced at understanding what is ‘good enough’ for the challenge you are facing: we can deliver on extreme technical detail for on-pack carbon labelling claims for a brand, through to more rapid approaches that enable decisions to be quickly taken on strategic direction being faced by senior management in a business.
Climate strategy development, science-based targets, and net-zero
Building from a clear understanding of your emissions ‘hotspots’ we help clients shape their strategic approach to climate change. We advise on everything from corporate governance to developing detailed emissions reductions plans, target setting, and data management.
In the last five years a core part of a business’s climate change strategy has become the development of credible short term “science-based targets” (SBTs). Corporate emissions targets are considered science-based if they are in line with what the latest climate science deems necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. We have helped clients, such as innocent drinks, get science-based targets officially validated by the Science-Based Targets Initiative and this continues to be a major area of work for us.
In addition to SBTs we also advise clients on emerging corporate best practice in setting longer-term “net-zero” targets – including the role of deep decarbonisation, carbon removals and carbon offsetting.
“3Keel know climate change inside out. They’ve solved some really difficult problems for us and are great at getting to the practical insights we need to start taking action. We rely on them to both challenge and guide us, and consider them a key partner”
Joe Hulme, Co-op Group Climate Change Officer
“The consultant team of 3Keel, Canopy and Mike Barry were outstanding. This was a challenging task, made even harder by the impacts of COVID, but their processes and final outputs secured the confidence and support of our members. Now the work starts to ensure we meet the net zero targets that have been set.”
Peter Andrews, BRC Head of Sustainability Policy
“The 3Keel team have significantly accelerated our journey to drive down the carbon footprint of our entire value chain. Their baseline assessment was clear and easy to understand, and gave us some unexpected results on where to focus attention. Their subsequent well-informed support on developing a carbon reduction plan gives us clear direction for the next steps on our carbon journey.”
Ruvan Mendis, Chief Operating Officer, graze
Carbon removals options and project development
One of 3Keel’s specialisms is working at the intersection of climate change and the natural environment. We have a forester, a farmer, a chartered surveyor, and conversation researchers on our team so we really understand the realities and technical detail of land management and ecosystems. Through our cross-business Carbon Removals Group we develop credible and responsible approaches to nature-based carbon dioxide removals – a topic of increasing interest in national and corporate net-zero delivery.
In collaboration with our trusted associates, we can also help turn theory into reality by creating removals projects and the investment vehicles to fund them.
Implementing your climate strategy
Understanding your climate impact and developing a strategy are the “easy” bit. The real hard work starts when you turn to implementation and delivery. We work with clients to embed climate action in businesses and supply chains – from corporate policy development to product innovation, supplier engagement, training, tool development and programme management. Given our extensive industry, NGO, research, and expert network we know who to turn to when we get to the limits of our knowledge on a specific topic.
Emissions data management, reporting and assurance
Emissions data collection, management and reporting is becoming increasingly sophisticated as businesses, customers and consumers demand greater transparency and granularity of information on climate risk and impact. While there are a dizzying number of software solutions, initiatives, and standards out there, we understand the reality of ensuring emissions data is reliable: without reliability there is no trust and without trust the data will be ignored by decision-makers. Examples of work on carbon data include our long-standing advisory role for the Tesco climate change team, where we have supported them over many years get their store and logistics carbon data externally assured for their annual report.
Given the need for carbon data solutions to be agile we are increasingly using flexible business intelligence platforms, such as PowerBI, to design and manage bespoke corporate and product carbon data solutions that feed off existing product and supply chain datasets.
Communication
Finally – with all the hard work done – it is important to communicate your climate change ambitions and successes. In our experience, the quality of communication is as important as the technical content and so both need careful consideration if you wish to influence and engage audiences (whether they are consumers, technical managers, or board members). Our in-house graphic designer can work with you to ensure the design quality of our deliverables match the technical rigour of the contents. A great example of this is our work for the British Retail Consortium on their industry-leading Climate Action Roadmap.
Want to know more about our climate change practice area?
Contact Richard Sheane for more information. Or phone our office +44 (0)1865 236500 and speak to one of our colleagues.
Climate Change projects and news
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Josh2020-01-28 12:17:092021-01-29 15:38:36Assessing nature’s climate change vulnerability
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Richard Sheane2018-02-28 09:49:322021-01-29 15:57:47Farming systems review for climate analysis
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Richard Scott2017-10-06 16:47:512021-01-29 16:03:12The carbon footprint of wine
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Richard Scott2017-10-06 14:55:192021-01-29 16:03:53Environmental impacts of livestock feed
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Richard Sheane2017-10-06 12:39:432021-01-29 16:08:56Grocery supply chain carbon reduction events
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Richard Sheane2017-10-06 09:34:262021-01-29 16:14:50The social benefit of climate adaptation