Comply Direct's Lowdown on Net Zero

During the past few years, many councils, companies and industries have declared climate emergencies and have pledged to hit environmentally focused targets to help combat this. This has been widely reported on in the news and has been growing in popularity with the general public becoming more and more concerned.

These pledges are a positive step toward climate action. However, the exact definitions around these terms can vary greatly, which can then lead to uncertainty around expectations. The issue is often that businesses, councils or industries interpret terms such as ‘Net Zero’, ‘Carbon neutral’, ‘Carbon positive’ and ‘Carbon negative’ differently.

Net Zero

Pledging Net Zero is where a business quantifies their greenhouse emissions and sets a meaningful plan to reduce and offset the equivalent emissions by, in line with the Paris Agreement, investing in carbon removal projects to generate offsets.

For example, our loyal member Waitrose, have committed to having zero carbon emissions in their operations by 2050. You can read how they plan to do this HERE

Carbon Neutral

To achieve Carbon Neutral status, an entity (such as a company, service, product or event) offsets the carbon emissions caused by their activity by funding the equivalent amount of carbon savings elsewhere in the world.

For example through the use of avoidance offsets such as clean cookstoves projects

Carbon Negative

The reduction of an entity's carbon footprint to less-than-neutral, so that the entity has a net effect of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, rather than adding it.

For example, another one of our fantastic members BrewDog has achieved this through offsetting actions such as planting trees and restoring peatland. You can read further about this HERE

Carbon Positive

This involves removing more carbon dioxide than is being produced by the entity by using more efficient processes and producing surplus renewable energy.

For example, producing more energy via solar panels than an entity requires and feeding this back to the grid.

We hope our examples can give you further insight into what to expect from the entities that are making these environmental pledges. You can be forgiven to feel a little confused and find these definitions unclear. In response to this, the growing momentum and escalating climate protection measures, an international standard is necessary.

The international standard ISO 14068 for “Greenhouse gas management and related activities – Carbon Neutrality” is currently being worked on and will help provide clear definitions for CO2 neutrality; this is scheduled to be completed within the next two years. ISO 14068 will provide clear definitions and parameters for CO2 neutrality in the future. In this way, the effect of the measures taken can be tracked and credibly demonstrated if climate neutrality is achieved. The standard is aimed at all responsible organisations, companies, cities and municipalities.

We wait for this to be completed eagerly and will update you as soon as it is published.