Energise – How Business Can Help Combat Climate Change

Highlights

Introduction to Energise
The Role of Big Corporates in Sustainability
Historical Parallels and Sustainability Challenges
Understanding Net Zero and Its Importance
Mindset Shifts in Business Regarding Sustainability
Government Support for SMEs in Sustainability
Global Leaders and Laggards in Sustainability
Emerging Trends and Public Perception
Energise’s Approach to Sustainability for Businesses
Tree Planting and Carbon Offsetting
Case Study: Revolution Bars
Sustainability for SMEs
Social Sustainability and Workplace Culture
Future Trends in Sustainability
Favourite Game: Molkky

Transcript

Chris Barnard: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Bear Business with me, Chris Barnard from Feedback Fans. I’m delighted to introduce our next guest, Adam Wright from Energise. He will be talking to us about sustainability specifically, and we’ll also go into a lot of the trends around net zero and talk about that.. A few different aspects around that. Adam, would you like to give us a bit of background on yourself and Energise and how the company has evolved since 2008?  📍

Adam Wright: Um, yeah, really pleased to be here. So, um, so Energise, uh, started business as a, um, energy consultancy in 2008. Um, I joined in 2018, so kind of 10 years into its inception. Um, my background actually is in electrical engineering and I studied electrical engineering at college with, as part of an apprenticeship with a pretty large, uh, multinational engineering firm.

Adam Wright: Interestingly, my background, uh, was that I’d spent eight or so years, uh, designing, uh, building and selling, uh, control systems for oil and gas platforms and, uh, gas pipelines, that type of thing. Um, but my, uh, the opportunity came about to join Energise, which kind of aligned to my passions to, uh, shift from energy engineering to energy efficiency.

Adam Wright: And, uh, and I’ve joined. Continue the journey with Energise to move into being more sustainability focused. And that’s how Energise has evolved. So we, Energise started off, um, as a, as a very small organisation on a dining room table with our two co CEOs, Simon and Tamzin. Um, as they were kind of just leaving university and realised that, uh, they wanted to, uh, create a business that was a force for good.

Adam Wright: that took on the challenge of climate change, but also brought along cultural change with that as well. Since then, we’ve developed, uh, to provide all sorts of services that are focused on sustainability, whether that’s energy efficiency, whether that’s developing net zero strategies and supporting organisations on that journey.

Adam Wright: And then more recently supporting organisations with social sustainability and how do they increase the sustainability of their people and workforce.   📍

Chris Barnard: I suppose it’s quite an unconventional route, isn’t it? To come from oil and gas and then to now be in energy sustainability. I suppose it’s, uh, well, I say it’s unconventional. It’s probably a great way to do it, right? It’s coming from an area where they’re talking a lot about sustainability and they’re probably see the winds changing and they’re looking to conform.

Chris Barnard: And so you’ve probably seen a lot of things that can change in those types of industries that would make a big difference if they got on board with a sustainability message,  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we’ve all seen that some of the, you know, the large, uh, oil producers, the BP’s, the shells, the ExxonMobils of the world have all started to shift their business model to being more, uh, sustainability led. So, you know, we see in the UK shell recharge as a, as an EV platform, uh, BP pulse as a, as an EV platform.

Adam Wright: Um, and it’s interesting to see having been in that industry. What the moves of these people are, and we’ve got to consider that whilst they’re still shifting their business model, it may still only be front facing. And in the background, these organisations are still pumping out loads of oil and loads of gas and, uh, out from the seabed, which is obviously then being burnt and contributing to the climate challenge.

Adam Wright: So there is some, uh, you’ve got to look behind the, uh, the smoke with some of these organisations and I think I, I can see that because of kind of played in both sectors. Um, but I think it’s difficult for maybe the general public to see.   📍

Chris Barnard: Some industries are certainly more sustainable than others. I was thinking about the other day, uh, certainly around smoking. Smoking, uh, has obviously been something that started with tobacco is great for you a long time ago. And obviously it’s absolutely not great for you. Just try and make that disclaimer now.

Chris Barnard: Right. But that was the, the marketing messages of old, even going further back than that. I was thinking of, uh, morphine was sold in that way, wasn’t it? And sort of, uh, It’s gonna say Dickensian era, everybody is going to be like, you’re totally wrong, it wasn’t Dickensian Chris, right? But, was sold in a way of, it’s good for you, Leeches before that, I was thinking, watching House of Dragon the other day, is they’ve got the leeches on the, on the poor lad who’s been, uh, scorched by a dragon. All these things that start with the messaging of, um, We are a great business. We are going to help you or we have health benefits or whatever. Some magic elixir, maybe. And then it goes into obviously times where there’s greater research, greater understanding. Actually, no tobacco is not good for you. Um, and, and you get to a point where, okay, uh, we need to stop people doing this, whether it’s smoking tobacco or what.

Chris Barnard: And it’s interesting from a sustainability perspective, I suppose that the people who are, uh, Challenged with solving the problem in that industry are the people who have caused the problems in the first place,   📍

Adam Wright: absolutely. And you know, if you, if you look at kind of emissions from a organisation level and you, and you trace their roots back, you know, I guess, um, uh, a carbon family tree, if you like. effectively all of the, all of emissions come from a few sources and those being fossil fuels, but also, um, animal agriculture and then, uh, land use change as well.

Adam Wright: So those, yeah, these big players who are contributing to those need to make changes so that we can then make changes further down. And obviously that doesn’t stop us from making change now. We can still, there are still things we can do. Um, but there’s a good portion of the actions that we take that are going to be driven by those, uh, those people at the top of the tree, I guess.   📍

Chris Barnard: and lots of businesses have been on a journey with sustainability haven’t there? I’m thinking back to my days in in London in the city. used to talk a lot about CSR, which was corporate social responsibility sort of 15 years ago. Um, And then I noticed that that wasn’t spoken about as much, maybe eight years ago.

Chris Barnard: And everyone was saying, Oh, it’s ESG now, Chris, right. It’s environmental got it, right. Environmental social governance. Um, and since then we’ve seen a lot of mindset shifts. I think particularly with COVID, uh, a greater understanding of sustainability and obviously lots of people talk about net zero now.

Chris Barnard: So I wondered if you could just explain for our audience about net zero and the importance of a net zero strategy for businesses  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah. So globally we’ve got, we’ve, we’ve got a target, um, that was set by the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Um, there are lots of acronyms in the sustainability world, so probably referred to as IPCC that we want to limit, uh, surface temperature change for a pre industrial level, uh, to be well below two degrees with the target being 1.

Adam Wright: 5. Um, and that means that we eventually need to reduce the damage that’s happening in the atmosphere to stop temperature on the surface of the planet changing. Um, and by doing, to do that, we need to reduce carbon emissions, any greenhouse gases. Generally, we refer to them as carbon, um, but it includes things like methane and, uh, complex gases like sulfur hexafluoride.

Adam Wright: Um, So we need to reduce those emissions. And that starts with change a, uh, the, the bottom of the, the, the tree, and that’s with people, but people can only make those changes if the options available to them from businesses, uh, are there. So business models need to shift so that they are providing more, uh, sustainable options, uh, whether that’s products or services, um, how they operate as a business becomes more sustainable.

Adam Wright: Switching from, if they’ve got a large fleet of, uh, Uh, internal combustion vehicles, how do they switch them to EVs and charge them through kind of sustainable energy, uh, supplies. And that means that, like I said, they, they provide more sustainable services to customers, to other businesses, um, and that they’re part of then a more sustainable supply chain.

Adam Wright: That all adds up. We then reduce overall carbon emissions, all kind of supporting that, uh, achieving that target of, uh, service temperatures being well below two degrees.   📍

Chris Barnard: Yeah, I think historically, it’s always been seen as a preserve of the big corporates and the big enterprise, right? Doing this sort of thing, being involved in sustainability. And I think a mindset shift that’s changed in the last few years, which has helped is that people have realized that just because your contribution, um, in the grand scheme of things might be small.

Chris Barnard: It doesn’t make it insignificant. Are you seeing that sort of mind shift changing the businesses you’re talking to Adam in terms of sustainability?  📍

Adam Wright: And you know, you mentioned before about large organisations talking about CSR and that shifted to ESG. So it’s probably fair to say that large organisations, whether it’s because of a want to do it or if it’s a need to do it because of regulatory pressure, they’re probably 10, 20 years ahead.

Adam Wright: What we now need to do collectively is bring the smaller organisations along on the journey as well. Um, for perspective in the UK, SMEs, I think, make up 99 percent of the total volume of businesses, about 51 percent of the economy, but then 44 percent of carbon emissions, non domestic carbon emissions. So whilst there are lots of, um, smaller emissions from small organisations, we need to take that collective action to, uh, reduce the emissions that are basically half of our total UK footprint.   📍

Chris Barnard: It’s a great answer. And you’ve raised two questions for me. One is, uh, how do you feel as an industry and sustainability around government support for this? Cause, cause it makes a great point in my mind around, uh, enterprises are doing it. They’ll have found ways of economies of scale with sustainability and many will have found it and no doubt we’ll go onto this, they can use it as a sort of unique value proposition. Is there financial support for SMEs and those businesses, as you mentioned, Massive profile in how we need to win in sustainability. Is there, is there support for them? Do you think there is enough government support for SMEs in sustainability?  📍

Adam Wright: At this point in time, no. Um, there isn’t really a huge amount of central government support. Typically, we see it being delivered from local authorities. So, um, a lot of local authorities, um, so like Greater Manchester, for example, will have declared a climate emergency over the last few years. And that’s them as a, as a local authority, accepting that there is a climate challenge, and they play a part in that.

Adam Wright: And their challenge then is to Not reduce the local authorities emissions, but reduce the area’s emissions. That means they have to work with those small organisations to take them on the journey as well. And typically that’s where we see funding come from. The funding at the moment from what we’re seeing is in the identification of a plan, developing your own net zero strategy.

Adam Wright: There isn’t a huge amount of grant funding effectively for actually doing the work. Um, and that’s where we then see the organisations, uh, kind of going back to shift in the business models then have to increase their prices to cover that to then make them more, uh, commercially advantageous.   📍

Chris Barnard: It’s something I wonder, it obviously gonna be hard to tell as we have such a new government in the UK, but I’m also wondering along that thread. Are there. Countries that we see who we think are doing more, doing less. I suppose it goes with the, uh, the zeitgeist. I’ve not used that word in a long time, the zeitgeist of the times and how people are feeling in moments such as of living crisis, causing living, uh, moments where the economy inflation’s high, I imagine these are the things that start getting set back things like sustainability targets, where we’re starting to see that on a global level.

Chris Barnard: Other certain countries that you see, Adam, that. Are you think are great sort of trailblazers in this space? And is there any, you’re willing to mention who are sort of lagging behind, even if it’s, if, and if it’s ourselves in the UK  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah, there certainly is. And, um, and there’s some really good reasons and considerations around it as well. The UK is definitely a leader in this space. Um, we know that our, um, emissions since about 1990 have halved. not necessarily that far if we go back to kind of pre industrial levels. Um, and being a leader in this space means that you then you’re creating, uh, you’re, you’re being more innovative and you’re creating new businesses that are supplying this.

Adam Wright: And all of that supports the economy because if you’ve developed these, um, this, uh, technology through innovation, You’ve then got other countries that want to buy that innovation. And then you kind of support the UK’s economy as a whole. It’s interesting, there’s a, there’s a, a, a documentary series that followed, uh, uh, ex US president Al Gore.

Adam Wright: I think he was a president, not sure. Not sure on my American history.  📍

Chris Barnard: Yeah. Maybe it was Vice President.  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah. Uh, so he, uh, he, uh, He joined the kind of UN conference in, I think it was 2015 when the IPCC’s target of well below two degrees was set. And it followed him around having these conversations with, uh, leaders of countries because the decision to apply that target would have been a vote for all the countries as part of the UN.

Adam Wright: So he went round to all these, uh, leaders of countries to try and convince them that it was the right thing to do to set this target. And some of the arguments that he has with countries that are a bit further behind. So. Uh, I guess slightly more developed countries that are further behind like the likes of China and India.

Adam Wright: Um, they are Currently kind of experiencing their peak of cheap energy by develop by creating the energy from fossil fuels we experienced that in the kind of early part of the 1900s but these other countries are now having that peak now and it only seems fair that they should be able to do that um, but we need to convince them to Maybe shift away from those fossil fuels quicker than Uh, some of the European countries and the Americas did, um, we know that China is developing a really good renewable, uh, technology, renewable energy technology.

Adam Wright: They are pumping solar panels out like no tomorrow, and that’s contributed to solar panels in the UK being cheaper. Um, but the innovation needs to come from everybody. Everybody needs to adopt it, and we all need to work collectively together to make it happen. Going back to your point around, is it maybe one of the first things that drops if we are in a situation where we need to put money into, you know, uh, more immediate problems?

Adam Wright: It’s a really difficult balance and it’s certainly not one that I would want to make. I don’t, I don’t, um, you know, it’s probably really difficult for the current government to make those decisions. Um, but you, you know, you have to consider what is happening now and what do we need to do now to stop things happening 10, 20, 30 years in the future.

Adam Wright: Yeah. And I think one of the pre election pledges from Labour was to bring back the delayed targets around EV vehicles and heat pumps, bringing them back to what they were before. So hopefully that’s an indication that they accept that the challenge is still there, the impacts are still going to happen to us in the UK in 10, 20, 30 years time, and we need to take some action now to reduce the impact of those as much as possible.   📍

Chris Barnard: I’m glad you bring up EV and heat pumps because whilst listening to you there, I was thinking of, um, certainly an emerging trends and popular things in business at a time, right? So I think arguably after AI. After video content that we spoke about last week on the podcast now into sustainability, I think something that’s so important in these things that are Um, either good for your business, good for the world in your case, the communication and messaging is so important and how it’s delivered, how it’s framed and also, uh, how it is communicated for the mainstream, right?

Chris Barnard: I think in AI circles, uh, in large language model, um, knowledge bases and people who are using it years ago, is an incredibly, um, people were so interested in how. It was so adopted, so widely adopted as a new technology, which is usually you have a couple of the people who are willing to be first movers, try these things out, um, and then you get fast followers obviously, and then there’s a curve that people eventually go for something.

Chris Barnard: And a lot of sustainability chats over the last few years, it’s been talk about, uh, offshore, onshore wind, changes coming there. As I understand that solar panels. Problems there. We have a gentleman. Who we have seen this guy. I need to hire him for my business. Adam, right? I’ve seen him on a roof in my neighborhood for the last 14 days. solar panels. Cause he, you know, it’s quite funny in this neighborhood. Cause everyone, as soon as they see solar panels go up, they don’t seem to have been sold with whatever the care package is for solar panels. And so the pigeons around here absolutely love it. They go there under the panels, destroy the panels.

Chris Barnard: As I understand, we have a couple of. So the power businesses we work with, once you get a bit of damage on solar panels, it’s actually, it affects a lot of the capture and the battery. So then we go into EV vehicles, heat pumps, heat pumps, still prohibitively expensive from conversations I’ve had with people about it. Uh, the battery factories, I think we’ve got one planned. Have we, you know, if we are leaders in sustainability, how sustainable is that? So how, from a messaging point of view, when you see these kind of. Uh, I don’t know if we would class them as PR fails, but I suppose nothing is simple in PR and certainly the PR listeners will be able to. to that with us. But how frustrating is it when you see these kinds of setbacks and can kind of get lost in sort of the nuance and the individualities of certain technologies. Can’t you? And forget about the bigger picture and maybe get, get held back. Does it, does it cause problems for you?

Chris Barnard: Do people raise these things with you or are people more generally, uh, happy to, uh, go for sustainability regardless, knowing that there’s going to be these sorts of natural issues as an emerging  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, It’s a very different answer dependent on if you’re talking to people, individuals, or if you’re talking to organisations. Um, I do find it quite frustrating the kind of, uh, uh, slow acceptance of some of the technologies. I would consider myself an early adopter of technology. I’ve got solar panels on the, on my roof here.

Adam Wright: Um, as we speak, my car is parked outside. My EV car is currently charging with a caravan on the back and I’m ready to go on holiday. Um, I’m ready to adopt it. It all works really well for me. I go back to your point around AI. You as a consumer, you can, you know, you can log into chat GPT if you want to, and you can have a free go at it.

Adam Wright: And that could change your mind either way. You could either think, wow, this is fantastic. Or you could think it’s scary. And you don’t want to ever see it again in your life. I think it’s harder with, uh, sustainability tech because you can’t just try things out. You can’t just do it. put a heat bump in your, in your house for a day or two days to try it out and decide if you’re going to spend thousands of pounds on installing it.

Adam Wright: Maybe you could do that with EVs because you can go out and you can kind of test drive with, um, with, uh, dealers. But then, is that one day that you test drive a car the same as every day in your life? Probably not. Um, so it’s, it’s difficult when we get the setback in, in the media around some of those technologies.

Adam Wright: Um, I’m, I’m on kind of. EV side of TikTok at the moment and some of the comments are, are really challenging. You know, people wanting, wanting to drive five, 600 miles in one sitting. I don’t really know who does that. Um, but then when you look at businesses, they’ve got the ability to take more of a risk because it’s easier for them to, um, uh, to, to install some of this technology.

Adam Wright: They’re more likely to lease EVs rather than buy EVs so that if it doesn’t work for them they can end the lease and they can switch back to ICE vehicles until the technology, uh, develops more and then it’s ready for them. Um, so it’s a really interesting conversation. If we look at both parties, you know, the individuals or the organisations, some of the concerns raised in the media make it really challenging to then sell it as a way forward for people.   📍

Chris Barnard: Yeah. And so I think we’ve, we’ve thankfully reached a point where businesses understand they need to embrace sustainability, need to have strategies for sustainability. So it’d just be great to hear just to make it, um, more actionable for the listeners, how Energise assist companies in developing and implementing sustainability  📍

Adam Wright: Sure. So, uh, we adopt a framework that we refer to as the four R’s and the four R’s, um, follow is effectively a cyclical framework that you review every year. It’s obviously a, a, a more of a task to create it in its first instance, but the review of it every year is much easier because you’ve already got your kind of baseline ready.

Adam Wright: And the four R’s are review, reduce, renew and rebalance. So the review stage is about understanding what is your. Uh, what your baseline emissions, uh, so doing that kind of calculation of your carbon footprint to understand all of the different sources of emissions in your direct and indirect control, getting a high level understanding about what you can do about them.

Adam Wright: And then using that to set a strategy that says, uh, we will be net zero by 2040 or 2050, or some people may be brave enough to say 2030, but I’m a bit dubious about some of those. Cause that’s very fast. Um, You then move on to the reduce stage, which is about how do we actually then make those reductions in our footprint?

Adam Wright: So how do we reduce our energy? Usage, how do we reduce our resource usage? How do we maybe not buy as many things because we don’t need to how do we you know? Do we stop traveling to Europe to have meetings with people for an hour? Can we just do that over teams? Or zoom or something like that? Um, and looking at your footprint and saying, these are the most intense areas.

Adam Wright: How do we then come up with an action plan to reduce those? And then obviously doing it. Uh, the renew section, the new part of the framework is around how do you then have some innovation? So how do you look at renewable technology? How do you work with your suppliers to develop kind of, uh, innovation that you can then build into your business model and then reap the rewards of the reduced emissions?

Adam Wright: So for example, in. Large construction firms may work with concrete, uh, manufacturers to create low carbon concrete, which we’ve seen in recent years. And then the final piece is, well, we know what your footprint is. You’ve, you’ve done the work to reduce it. You’ve reduced it even further with, uh, innovation.

Adam Wright: And then you’ve got that last bit left. And that’s where you then look at offsetting options, which is, uh, typically tree planting or carbon capture. Um, but you offset the final piece. Some organisations like to offset their entire footprint from the start. Um, that’s what we would call carbon neutrality rather than net zero.

Adam Wright: And that’s fine. If they want to do that, the messaging on that, we’ve got to be really careful with, um, so we don’t consider that kind of greenwashing as a reputational risk. Um, but normally it’s for the final part of the journey. You’ve reduced your emissions by let’s say 80, 90%. You’ve got 10, 20 percent left.

Adam Wright: So let’s invest in some carbon credits. to remove that final bit of carbon directly from the atmosphere.   📍

Chris Barnard: I suppose many people’s only experience of sustainability if they’re a smaller SME might have been coming across the tree planting companies that you mentioned. Um, because there’s been a lot of popularity on that. That’s become a very popular way for, um, as small and medium sized enterprises and a lot of bigger enterprises as well have been doing that.

Chris Barnard: Has that been, is there a reason why that has been taken off the most, I mean, obviously planted trees, everyone’s surely in favor of planted more trees, right? We’re all in favor of that, but that seems to have become the sort of populist forward. Adam is, is it, is it as effective as it is represented to be?

Chris Barnard: Or how have you found that the growth of that industry?  📍

Adam Wright: So, um, there are two types of offsetting options. You’ve got carbon reductions, which is tree planting, carbon capture, and you’ve got, um, sorry, that’s carbon removals and then carbon reductions, which is investing in schemes that will, uh, reduce people’s footprint, but not necessarily remove from the atmosphere.

Adam Wright: So those examples would be investing in, uh, renewable technology in developing countries. Uh, maybe, uh, purchasing cleaner cook stoves in developing countries where the emissions are reduced but not removed. Um, you can buy those credits and you can, uh, add them or remove them from your footprint. Um, tree planting is, I think, is popular because it’s physical.

Adam Wright: It’s, it’s, you know, somebody can spend between two and twenty pounds per tonne of carbon on, on trees. Typically you would kind of, a bit like sponsoring a panda at the zoo, you know, you get updates about your trees, you know, for, for some of these offset credits, if you buy them through the right people, they will tell you where your kind of location of these trees are, you know, if you ask for updates about how it’s going, then so be it.

Adam Wright: Um, there’s lots of technical, uh, stuff around carbon offset, so. Typically a ton of carbon isn’t offset via tree planting for about 40, 50 years. So it’s not that you buy a credit and you’ve suddenly offset that straight away. You’re effectively mortgaging your carbon over 50 years. Um, so, and some of that maybe isn’t necessarily apparent when people go to buy offsets for these organisations that are providing options for small organisations to buy them very quickly and very cheaply in some cases.   📍

Chris Barnard: It’s a great point, isn’t it? Of course, a tree takes quite a long time to grow. People know about growing trees. So I think there is that that people feel they have an instant gratification where they have. Oh, I’ve paid to have a tree planted. Then I don’t need to worry about these things, but obviously it’s got to take its time to grow and stuff. Um, would you be able to give us an example then? Could you highlight a, a successful case study where Energise has significantly, impacted a client’s sustainability?  📍

Adam Wright: we, so we work with about 150 customers at a time. So. Trying to find the right person to talk about, um, was, was a little difficult, but I’ve pinned out a, um, kind of a high street name that hopefully some people will be able to resonate. So, since, uh, 2017 we’ve been working with Revolution Bars, who some people may know as Vodka Revs or, uh, just Revs.

Adam Wright: Um, from maybe from their uni days, but maybe as they get a bit older, some nice lunch during the daytime. Um, so we’ve worked with them since 2017 and we took them through that four hour cycle. So understanding what their footprint was, how do they then reduce it and then supporting them or offsetting at the end.

Adam Wright: Through that work, we identify that their baseline emissions were around 50, 000 tons, um, which is, uh, for the size of organization they are is typically expected. Um, but that’s across everything that they do. So the energy for their buildings. Um, their employees commuting from home to, uh, the, the, the bar that they work in, all the stuff that they purchase, all the alcohol that they purchase or produce.

Adam Wright: Um, and potentially their investments as well. So if they’ve got kind of large pension investments or invest in other organisations, what are the emissions coming from those? We work with them to understand how do they reduce some of that stuff? Um, through, uh, being more efficient in their buildings, being more efficient in their supply chain.

Adam Wright: offering options for, uh, reduced business travel, et cetera. There’s a whole large action plan of things that they were tasked to do. Um, Since then they’ve reduced their footprint pretty significantly. So that I think they’re down about 20 percent at the moment with their target to be down. I think it’s 40 percent by the end of the decade.

Adam Wright: So by 2030, um, they do some cool projects as well that we’ve supported them on. So, uh, their Christmas menus and their cocktail menus, uh, they aim to, uh, measure the footprint from those and offset those. Um, and, and it works really well because of their. predominantly student, uh, customer base. And we know that young people are more interested in sustainability and more likely to, uh, buy sustainable products.

Adam Wright: So having cocktail menus that are, uh, offset and carbon neutral is potentially a, uh, is a great sales piece on there as well. Um, another really interesting project that we worked on with is to, uh, consider removing the half a passion fruit that comes in a porn star martini cocktail. Um, which, if you follow the journey of that, is grown overseas, uh, harvested, put on a plane, in, in this case it was on a plane, flown over, um, into a warehouse, distributed to sites, cut in half, put into the pornstar martini, uh, given to the customer, they drink the, the drink, and then the glass goes back on the bar with half the passion fruit still in it, goes in the bin, goes to landfill and, um, uh, uh, decomposes and lets off greenhouse gases.

Adam Wright: So pretty much at all points of its journey, this passion fruit is, uh, is, is a negative impact on the environment. Um, so we weren’t willing to, to remove it and replace it with rice paper, uh, that gave a sustainability message, ended up removing about a hundred tons of passion fruit, um, and which had, had a pretty significant, uh, emissions reduction as well.   📍

Chris Barnard: Wow. That’s an incredible number just to remove the, the, the actual passion fruit that’s being flown over. I think these sorts of stories make it so much more real for people in that they, they probably look at their own supply chains and think, Oh, you know, how can I be more sustainable? Just some of these small measures.

Chris Barnard: I love that it’s. Um, using the rice paper, you’re saying instead of the actual fruit, probably not so good for passion fruit suppliers, they’re probably like, Oh, curse the sustainability people for being so good, uh, that you can actually create that because of course, vodka revs, as I used to know it, you’re right.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, you’re talking to the right audience. I think our audience probably are, uh, probably pouring themselves a glass of wine as they’re listening to us now, right? They, they’ll know a Rev’s cocktail, how iconic the Pornstar Martini is as well, having that passion fruit. So to be able to sort of display that sort of message and make that massive saving, I think is incredible, really. Um, Go revolution. I don’t think I went as a uni student. I don’t think I could afford it. I don’t think that I was their target market back then. I think I used to still go in and have a beer at once. I started earning a bit more money, thankfully at revolution. Uh, but as we, as we touched on earlier, I suppose sustainability isn’t just for the enterprises, is it?

Chris Barnard: I, or coming from investor pressure, anything like that. So it’d be great to hear about how Energise tailors its services to the unique needs of, of smaller enterprises as  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah. So as I mentioned before, SMEs make up around 44, 45 percent of non domestic carbon emissions in the UK. So, uh, yeah, even though there’s lots of them still, uh, uh, cumulative large footprint to, to, um, action upon. And ultimately the end answer of how we support organisations, whether they’re small or large or the same, we want people to understand what they need to do.

Adam Wright: Um, how do they do it? And then we support them and um, hold their hand as much as or as little as they like um Until they kind of achieve their their net zero goals the differences between large enterprises and small organisations is uh effectively regulatory pressure, legislation, um, and scrutiny that they may face from investors or, um, or other stakeholders.

Adam Wright: So what that allows us to do is we, we have a, uh, sustainability service that’s aimed at SMEs. Uh, we call it systemic and it takes people on that same four hour journey. But just allows us to not have to create the kind of pages and pages of methodology that needs to go alongside a corporate customer’s piece of work, because an SME doesn’t need that for some, to present to somebody to kind of read through and examine and audit.

Adam Wright: Basically, um, large organisations have got requirements to, uh, uh, it depends on how big they are, but they’ve got requirements to consider their climate related risks. and report on those into their annual report. Uh, some of them need to, uh, assess their energy consumption every four years and understand how they make reductions on that.

Adam Wright: Some are required to disclose all of their sustainability efforts through various platforms. So all of that leads to having to have a, uh, an answer that is accompanied by lots of detail, um, lots of open source effectively kind of data. And an SME doesn’t need that. So our, our approach with Systemic is to assess the footprint, come up with an action plan on how to reduce that footprint.

Adam Wright: And again, the kind of renewable stuff, um, give them targets and an action plan to work forwards on. And then if they’d like to, an option to kind of offset through, um, really good standard offsetting credits at the end.   📍

Chris Barnard: Something I think. That needs to be encouraged in SMEs. And maybe it’s something I appreciate what, what it’s like being an SME. You’ve got pressures from all these sides, but I think something that can be encouraged is that sustainability can be a, a really great, unique selling point for your business.

Chris Barnard: And particularly if you are a. Say a startup, a scale up. Some of the startups and scale ups would work with us. If you can build in sustainability from the outset, uh, and create your business sustainable by design, that gives you a lot of great advantages, particularly if you’re in an industry that has been dominated by businesses that have been there for, for a while, for example, Adam, because they will probably be having to work with you.

Chris Barnard: Retrofit on sustainability, probably have to change a lot of relationships so they’re more sustainable, right? Because when, if you are moving to a more sustainable base, that you are probably changing suppliers, changing the way you do things that might sort of put people’s app noses, whereas if you are a startup scale up, you’ve got the agility to be able to put sort of sustainability at the heart and soul of everything you do, Adam, right?

Chris Barnard: Is that, would that be something you’ll be encouraging for the smaller  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah, it’s a really important point and and bringing people on the journey We need to not just focus on you know We’re telling you that you probably should do this because you’re going to support the global net zero target We have to sell all the other benefits and in some cases some of the risks that come with it as well.

Adam Wright: So um, we Being a sustainable business is going to make you more commercially attractive I mentioned before that younger people, so some of the, uh, I guess, predominantly kind of Gen Z and millennial generations, uh, want to be more sustainable. Um, so they want to buy products from sustainable organisations.

Adam Wright: So we’ve seen like success stories, um, on the high street from the, the likes of Lush, who talk a lot about how they look after their people and by, uh, ingredients from sustainable sources. Um, and And we see that kind of not only B2C, but also B2B. Um, so in last couple of weeks I was at a conference, uh, where we had a standard of Energise and we were an SME as well.

Adam Wright: We’ve got 44 employees, um, and we have B Corp certification. So a couple of years ago we were certified to be a good sustainable company. That’s acting to be a force for good. in environmental terms, in employee terms, in customer terms, in community terms. And of course we want to shout about that. And so we put that logo, next to our logo on our kind of stand background.

Adam Wright: And the vast majority of people that spoke to us spoke to us because we had that B Corp logo. And that was the opening conversation. We saw that you’re a B Corp. Oh, we’re looking to be a B Corp as well. How can you help us? Um, so we know that being more sustainable, works, uh, you know, allows you to be more commercially attractive.

Adam Wright: There’s other benefits as well. You know, if you’re buying less products to reduce your footprint, then you’re not spending as much. So there’s financial, um, advantages to it as well. And also you’ve got, you know, we’ve kind of go back to the renew part of the four hours. If you’re working with innovation and R and D with companies, they may give you some of these products for free because you’re trialing it.

Adam Wright: So there’s lots of, um, Uh, advantages for small organisations to go on the journey, not just your support in the wider net zero target.   📍

Chris Barnard: I’m delighted you raise being a B Corp actually, because that’s something we wanted to go on to in terms of when we talk about sustainability, everyone thinks of the environmental concerns, but something that has become sort of at the forefront of great businesses minds has been being more sustainable on a social footing. So I just want to ask you sort of what role should social sustainability play? Play in an overall strategy and why is it important to businesses because we’ve seen people particularly post COVID be far more aware of their, um, their staff health with the move to hybrid working and certainly impacted on this. How much do people talk to you about social sustainability?  📍

Adam Wright: it’s certainly, uh, a topic that’s, uh, more predominant in people’s conversations now. And again, if we kind of make this split of large organisations to small organisations, so, You mentioned before about large organisations talking around CSR and the social part of CSR kind of continues today, but it’s gone further than maybe allowing your employees to have a day off work or providing kind of donations to organisations.

Adam Wright: It’s looking at how do you, um, ensure that you are, uh, have a diverse workforce. And with that diversity, you’re being inclusive of that workforce and providing everyone kind of equitable opportunities. Um, and we’ve seen that, uh, somewhat recently or in the last few years around the, uh, gender pay gap requirements.

Adam Wright: So large organisations reporting on that. Um, and then, uh, I don’t believe there’s any requirement for anyone to do anything about it. Um, but, uh, I think the reporting of it is kind of, uh, enough for people to say, you know, if you’re paying women 25 percent less than men on average, it’s okay. And you’re publishing that on your website, you’re probably going to do something about it.

Adam Wright: But that’s shifting potentially into, uh, the, the government considering how do we do, uh, pay gap reporting based on ethnicity and disabilities. So that we’re looking at, uh, diversity as a, as a wider set rather than just gender that may have been the, uh, regulatory requirement in the past. And then with smaller companies, um, obviously they’re not going to have that kind of legislative regulatory kind of pressure.

Adam Wright: Um, But a lot of these organisations are doing this stuff anyway, because the cost of recruiting people and, uh, and not retaining employees is probably quite significant for small organisations. So if you’re providing a great workplace and a great culture for people to work in, they’re likely to stay there.

Adam Wright: So then your overall costs are going to to reduce from employment. Um, and, and small organisations. Lots of people want to work for small businesses because they have that culture already, you know, there’s already um, you know, the typical things around like, you know, you can, nobody really matters when you have time off work, where in larger organisations, you’ve got to do full handovers and put a request in six weeks before, whereas small businesses can be more agile in that sense.

Adam Wright: Um, so it’s a really interesting topic. Um, and it’s really interesting to see how people are going to consider social as part of their wider. Sustainability plans, like you say, not just on the environmental front.   📍

Chris Barnard: do you expect this culturalmind shift? So it sortt of being far more aware of these things happening as in part due to a switch over in generation. So now, very much. Um, the baby boomers and maybe Generation X and, and that sort of era are moving out of the C suites and you’ve got more millennials coming through now. Do you think they’re more, are they more socially aware? Are they more environmentally aware? I suppose they’ve had more years of this type of persuasion and more evidence now, right, and science to help them make these decisions.  📍

Adam Wright: And I suspect there’s a whole raft of, uh, I guess visibility, uh, things that have happened recently. So, you know, because a lot of people are shouting about the sustainability things they’re doing, it means that, uh, I guess mainly younger people are able to see what competitors in their space are doing.

Adam Wright: So if you work for a, you know, one large bank, but you see that another bank is Uh, providing a better culture and, you know, maybe they’ve decided to not invest in fossil fuels and that aligns with your values, you’re more likely to move over to them. Um, and we, I think we all kind of experienced that, uh, employee loyalty maybe isn’t as strong as it has been in the past that I know people in my family who joined an organization at 16 as an apprentice and they retired there at 65, 66.

Adam Wright: So they’ve been there for a good solid 50 years. And, um, you know, maybe when they leave, they kind of get given a watch or, you know, something like that, a tie. Um, but younger people don’t want to do that. They want to move around because they get better experiences. They may, like I said, they may move to an organization that’s got a better culture and a better sustainability standing.

Adam Wright: Um, obviously pay is a really important thing. Moving around, you get better pay. So it’s, as an organization looking at social side of things, providing diverse work or creating diverse workforces and inclusive workforces, building a really, uh, strong culture means that you’re going to retain these employees and have really good talent.   📍

Chris Barnard: And there’s been some really dank memes about this go round hasn’t there about the the corporate We’re a family type environment. So you would see that for a time wouldn’t you on uh, On LinkedIn jobs, say where it’s saying, Oh, we’re a family and it sort of list out the benefits and it would be this many days off and you’d look at it and it’d just be  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah.  📍

Chris Barnard: amount of days off and it would be things like free fruit. Uh, you know, uh, maybe one low alcohol beer on a Friday. It’s been amazing to see kind of that shift. I think COVID particularly. Um, the acceleration of work from home and hybrid, you had a lot of these businesses that had held out the absolute stalwarts that said, absolutely not work from home who were kind of forced to do it.

Chris Barnard: And actually, I’ve heard a lot of stories from businesses who actually when they adjusted to it. Um, and finally, the barriers, the imagined barriers from it and everything else. Um, dissipated, they actually found that they really like it. I can think of a publishing house in particular who were adamant from a mindset culturally that no one could work from home and actually after a few weeks of it, they’re like, actually only come in when you really need to it.

Chris Barnard: Well, we were going to get rid of the lease and we’re going to find other spaces, more creative spaces to you, for you to work from and this changing mentality, uh, I’ve got a friend who works for a bank and he said to me recently, it’s not. Three days work from home anymore. Chris, it’s days where you can’t work from home, right?

Chris Barnard: So in his context, that will be, can you go to the office in Canary Wharf or wherever it is, but it’s been incredible to see that shift obviously with COVID and now there’s a bit of a retracement where businesses are trying to. Get staff back in kind of after the horses have bolted, right? How do you get the horses all back in? But interesting from a sustainability perspective, because I’d have thought the knock on effects of, all these people not traveling around with COVID and stuff probably accelerated us towards targets actually, Adam, did they?  📍

Adam Wright: Um, potentially. Um, I think, I think the, uh, Post COVID, uh, progress report from the committee for climate change suggested that there was not a, there was a, there was a bit of a dip, uh, mainly in that kind of full lockdown, uh, period, but then after that, you know, it wasn’t significant enough. Um, the technical answer is that yes, you, uh, you know, you don’t have people commuting to work, but instead of having one office, you’ve now got a hundred remote offices.

Adam Wright: And you’ve got people who weren’t in their homes before who are now heating them, who are now running IT equipment rather than that being one central office. So, um, it’s a really, it’s all of these kind of cultural change. Um, I don’t envy business leaders having to make those decisions because at the end of the day, organisations still, or businesses still have a, uh, I guess a legal obligation as being limited companies to make profits.

Adam Wright: Um, and if you start reducing productivity because of these cultural changes or, um, you, you make other, you make changes that impacts production of that profit. You’ve got to really decide, is it the right thing to do? Is it going to upset a few people by asking them to come into the office two days a week, rather than being at home five days a week?

Adam Wright: It’s a really difficult position. Like I said, I don’t envy business leaders having to make those decisions at all.   📍

Chris Barnard: No, and I suppose even with lockdown, it didn’t stop people like Dominic Cummings driving up to Barnard Castle, right? So the emissions were still  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah.  📍

Chris Barnard: But that’s all in the past. We don’t want to focus on the past. I’d like you to just take us into the future, show us your crystal ball, really, and just tell us what your thoughts are on the future for sustainability and how Energise in particular are preparing for upcoming trends and challenges that you must be seeing on the horizon, Adam.  📍

Adam Wright: So. I’m hoping it’s going to be a really exciting space, and there’s no reason to doubt it won’t be. We’ve spoken a lot about, or I’ve spoken a lot about innovation in this, and there’s lots of innovation to come out. There’s new technology, kind of, what feels like every week at the moment. So our consultancy team get to, you know, bring that in and then kind of digest it and send it off to our customers to say, you know, here’s this new technology, you can maybe trial it, or it’s ready for you just to fully adopt it.

Adam Wright: And, you know, we, we all kind of get a bit nerdy and get into all the details and, you know, my engineering side comes out and I get really into all the kind of data sheets and stuff. Um, so it’s going to be a really exciting space. You know, we’ve recently seen, uh, universities kind of, uh, putting on, uh, degree courses that are focused on sustainability.

Adam Wright: So we’re soon going to be seeing the outcome of that and great talent coming into the space, which is really exciting. Um, quite difficult at the minute to find good sustainability experience talent. Um, I think there are, there are two trends that, that, uh, I can see and I think that Energise, um, also accepts is going to happen.

Adam Wright: Um, we’ve got digitalization of the sector, I guess. Um, we have got a huge amount of digital platforms that claim to do all sorts of things. Um, and predominantly they will, the main one is about producing your carbon footprint and they will connect into all your systems, you’ll connect to your energy supplier, they’ll connect to your QuickBooks or your Xero or whatever platform you use, and then spit out a carbon number.

Adam Wright: Um, and then they may say, well, here’s your carbon number, give us this much money and we can offset it for you as well. Um, Sounds great. We’ve got concerns. We don’t think maybe it kind of gets under the bonnet enough. And there’s, there’s, uh, there’s how do you apply different things in our, uh, personally in Energise, we’ve, we’ve seen some cases where it’s been difficult to measure that.

Adam Wright: So, uh, our co CEO a few years ago bought some solar panels and I think from EDF and on one of these you spent X amount of thousands of pounds on solar panels with EDF. But these platforms go, Oh, it’s EDF. So it must be electricity and it must be gas. So they apply that rather than the solar panel emission factors.

Adam Wright: So, um, you know, AI is providing a, maybe some of a change to that and is providing some of that kind of, um, deep dive analysis, but we’re not there yet. And then there’s the rest of the journey, you know, that may take off the first hour in our four hour approach, but it doesn’t give you the other, uh, reduce and renew ones, which It kind of gives you the rebalance one.

Adam Wright: Um, how we’re preparing for that is we, we have created our own platform, but we don’t use it as a customer facing one. So our customers won’t necessarily go into their connect systems and spit up a number. We use our consultants still as the key, um, part of that journey. And then the platform is, will be used as a presentation of the outcome.

Adam Wright: Um, so they can kind of deep dive into the numbers. Oh, we’ve purchased all of this stuff. What are my emissions specifically from, uh, wood or from concrete or anything like that? And we can deep dive into the really individual numbers if they want to. And then it will provide their kind of overall sustainability journey as well.

Adam Wright: So how are they progressing to net zero? Uh, eventually I’ll have some social stuff in there, but it’s, it’s less, less numbers with social is more doing. Um, the other interesting trend is around standardisation. Um, at this point in time, there are not a huge amount of standards around sustainability and that’s led to a lot of organisations creating their own.

Adam Wright: Some of them are widely accepted, so the science based target initiative set a net zero standard and a lot of organisations will align to that. But we’ve seen a lot of others in over the years. Energise have tried to create one and we decided it wasn’t the right thing to do. The Carbon Trust when they were owned by the government Um, they had their own carbon trust standards that we saw in kind of shop windows as stickers um, there’s all sorts of accreditation schemes and What we need is a common international standard that says this is the definition of net zero This is the definition of how do you consider that you are a net zero organization?

Adam Wright: How do you measure against it and how at what point can you say? We are net zero And the same for social stuff, um, and the same for biodiversity and stuff as well. I mean, the core focus now needs to be on net zero standards, and hopefully we’ll get there in the coming years. And then we can start expanding standardization into the other, the other areas of sustainability.   📍

Chris Barnard: Reminds me a lot of our own journey at feedbackfans.com in terms of maybe 10 years ago. I think I, I had the exact same sort of reservations about our industry. There was a big push then for, um, companies like Wix or build your own websites, right? Which is fine. That digitalization had come, but if you build a terrible website, It’s not going to do anything for you.

Chris Barnard: You might now have a website and you’ll be able to save people. I’ve got a website. How much did it cost you? Oh, it’s free. Okay. Well, it’s probably free for a reason, right? Cause you are missing out on, I think this is where a lot of startups particularly go wrong is that if you’re not going to spend on the expertise to help you with these things, and that can range from, uh, Uh, actually, you should have a call to action here.

Chris Barnard: Not there, right? Just little nuggets of information that you probably won’t pay for. But if you’ve got a friend who works in that space, they will help you out to all the way off. Okay, we’ll manage this for you. What are your goals and objectives? And so I totally think that that sort of premium approach is coming back and people Are willing to pay for that. We’ve seen that in a cycle here. So 10 years on from them being our concerns, I would say that, uh, the people who decided, oh, we’re not gonna, uh, host or do our marketing with you, Chris, we got to do it in India cause it’s cheaper have now come back. They’ve had that experience. We used to talk about being everyone’s third web designer.

Chris Barnard: And that would be because the first time they would do it, they’d do it themselves terribly. Second time, they’d get their cousin to do it and it would be slightly better, but you know, terrible again. Didn’t work. Right. So then they would come to us. And actually by that point, they’d have a bit of a budget, a bit of a knowledge in what they’re doing.

Chris Barnard: And actually it’d be a better conversation for, for both businesses. You see? Um, so I, so I totally get that those challenges. Uh, unfortunately we’ve come to the end of our time today. I think I’ve, I must have about 10 more follow up questions for you, but what I will do is put your social media in the show notes so that people can ask them to you directly. Uh, so just one last question for you. last four minutes, which would be the question we ask everybody on the bear business podcast thing. It says a lot about people’s approach to risk and business. Uh, I’d just like to ask you what your favorite game is. Can be a video game, card game, dice game, dominoes game, any sort of game.

Chris Barnard: Really? What would be the, your favorite game? Go to.  📍

Adam Wright: Interesting. So I’m not a big fan of video games. Um, not a big fan of being sat in front of a screen. Um, board games, also not a big fan of. Um, I think my, my favorite game would be a, a, I, I guess a garden game. It’s, um, I’m probably going to mash up the pronunciation of this, but Mölkky, um, which is a, I think it’s Swedish, Swedish I think.

Adam Wright: Um, but the aim of the game is that you have 12 skittles and then a cylinder throwing, um, Implement and you set them out in the garden kind of together like you would with bowling pins Uh, you throw the the throwing implement at the skittles and you try and knock them down The aim is to get 50 points Um, if you knock down one skittle you get the points that are printed on the top Which are 1 to 12 If you knock down more than one skittle you get the amount of points of the skittles that you’ve knocked down So if you knock five skittles down you get five points Um if you go over 50 Then you reset to 25 and you start again.

Adam Wright: The great thing is that the skittles spread out. So you don’t reset them to the kind of central location every time somebody throws. So you end up going from this game that started in kind of 2 3 square metres and you suddenly start expanding out into kind of 100 square metres because the skittles are just being flung everywhere.

Adam Wright: I think it’s great because it’s got loads of players, brings people together, great in the sunshine. Um, But yeah, that would certainly be my favourite game.   📍

Chris Barnard: I love that. I love the jeopardy of it. I love that you have to get it 50. I can imagine there’s a lot of occasions Are there where you’re very close and one of those games where you can sprint ahead? But actually you can find yourself like me when i’m trying to play darts trying to hit a double Could be there all night Make sure you get yourself a  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah.  📍

Chris Barnard: cokes in for a few sherbets to need them So i’ll try and hit this double 10 for forever Yeah, I imagine it can be how long would a game if I played you at Mölkky?

Chris Barnard: How long would you expect a game of Mölkky to  📍

Adam Wright: Um, I think if you’re playing with two people, you could probably have a good round, maybe ten minutes. If you’ve got eight people, and you know, you do have one of those jeopardies where the twelve pin is right next to the one pin, but you only need one point, uh, you know, you could go on for maybe, maybe half an hour, forty minutes.   📍

Chris Barnard: Do you have any hints and tips? Because when you mentioned it the other day, I’ve actually bought a set. I think my son at six months old is probably gonna be too young for it. So I’ll just be like, come on, hurry up, get older. So we can play monkey in the garden. Have you got any sort of tips for the, for the listeners?

Chris Barnard: I’m sure sales of Mölkky are going to go flying through the roof now  📍

Adam Wright: Yeah, I,  📍

Chris Barnard: any tips to help out our, uh, the bear business crowd  📍

Adam Wright: I think the, I think the obvious approach would be to just to launch the, the, the cylinder at the one that you want to go for. I would suggest throw high and let it kind of come down on the skittle. Uh, because if you’ve got a few in front and a few behind, you’re going to get the one you need.   📍

Chris Barnard: It’s a great tip. We got to go with that. Adam, thank you ever so much for your time today. I’m sure we’ll have you back on, um, later on in the, uh, maybe later on in the year or next year, just to talk about how things are going with the small business propositions and any developments there. Uh, try and give the bear business crowd a look in.

Chris Barnard: Thank you ever so much for spending your time with us  📍

Adam Wright: No worries. Thanks. Chris, it’s been a pleasure.