Today’s the day that a mandatory carbon reporting and trading scheme comes into force for some 5,000 UK businesses (the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme is its full title if you’re interested!), yet confusion still reigns regarding its implementation, enforcement and its overarching policy goals.
This is most evident from a Telegraph article today in which, not only are the quotes in the body of the article pretty much unanimously derogatory toward the scheme (e.g. “the scheme is likely to add 6% to affected business energy costs next year” etc) but more interestingly, there are also some 28 highly disparaging reader comments (at the time of writing). Most reader comments refer to climate change being some sort of conspiracy theory (or even April Fool’s joke!) aimed at lining the pockets of politicians, experts and consultants, without a single positive comment to the effect that we might actually need a change of tack in our approach to doing business – and that attempting to change business behaviour by implementing a limit on carbon usage might (just might…) help wrestle in global warming.
Admittedly, the introduction of the scheme does not appear to have been as widely publicised as it could have been. As a result, the opportunity to clearly spell out the vision of success in reducing carbon emissions by 2020 (and ultimately 2050) and what this might mean for climate change has been missed. The danger now is that the naysayers get the opportunity to nit-pick and detract from a potential game-changing opportunity. Surely, even those sceptics who contest whether pumping fossil fuel fumes into the atmosphere actually impacts on global warming, must agree that extracting oil and fossil fuels at the rate we are now cannot continue infinitum?
Our current mode of business revolves around extracting and spending (most of) the natural capital resources of future generations when really we should be confining ourselves to spending and investing its income only (“spending capital”, “getting in debt for future generations….” does this sound familiar?).
Bringing the extractive qualities of businesses (in this case, energy consumption) sharply into focus for business decision-making and strategy should help empower new ways of thinking. Less about short term profits and targets and more about longer term value. New modes of thinking such as:
Sustainability. Responsibility. Accountability. Transparency. Community. Innovation.
Building sustainable value for the long-term. We can’t put this off any longer.
It was Umair Haque who aptly coined thick or constructive capitalism. A new way of thinking about business that is centred around building sustainable long term value. Could the introduction of CRC represent another small step toward the dawning of constructive capitalism?
Photo credit: Kuyzetac