In Q4 2019 MMT Digital made a pledge to become a carbon negative company by 2020, offsetting more CO2 than we generate. We always offset the same amount of CO2 (per person per year) regardless of how much we reduce our actual footprint. And thanks to some of our reduction strategies, we are pleased to announce that we are now carbon negative.
As we’ll never reduce how much we offset, we expect to become more and more carbon negative over time as we continue to reduce our carbon footprint. And the great news on that front is that in 2020 so far, for obvious reasons, we have calculated that our carbon footprint is down by over 50%. Partially thanks to a reduction in electricity usage at the offices but mostly (because you might expect electricity usage to have increased at our people’s homes) because of the current reduction in employee commuting and inter-office travel. As we can now accurately track the carbon impact and report to the company (and our clients) on a quarterly basis, we’ll be doing all that we can to minimise the expected bounce-back in carbon emissions that could occur when the world settles into a “new normal”.
During lockdown we’ve been working with the Carbon Trust to achieve a carbon neutral certification for our operations (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) to PAS 2060, an internationally recognised standard for carbon neutrality, for 2019 (there is no carbon negative certification). This is a key achievement as part of our overarching 2020 carbon negative strategy for a few reasons:
#1 We moved fast in 2019, developing our own models to measure our Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions because we wanted to be carbon negative across our entire footprint. The Carbon Trust’s carbon neutral certification provides a full audit of our Scope 1 and Scope 2 measurement and reduction strategy, covering all direct emissions from owned or controlled sources and indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed.
#2 The Carbon Trust also spent time working through our method of calculating our Scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain) so we could be confident that our approach was an accurate and a fair representation of our entire footprint. N.B. at this stage our logging and tracking of our upstream Scope 3 emissions is not granular enough to enable carbon neutral certification of this element and this is something that we will work on this year.
#3 This process has enabled us to improve our carbon footprint calculator that is available in our Carbon Negative Starter Pack which includes everything you need to begin your organisation’s carbon negative journey. As well as all of our processes, CO2 models and tools, the pack also includes an optional Advanced Mode for recording electricity usage from meters in multiple offices and the use of data from the Scope 3 Evaluator to improve the way the Scope 3 emissions are calculated using simple inputs in the model.
Our carbon neutral certification from the Carbon Trust couldn’t have come at a better time, as last month we launched the first 12-week Carbon Negative Kickstarter Programme on behalf of the BIMA Sustainability Council. We should have some exciting outputs from that programme to share later in the year.
If you’d like to know more about how MMT became carbon negative or how we can help you build more sustainable digital platforms, please drop me an email at james.c@mmtdigital.co.uk.