Carbon Training International

Carbon Management is something every business must consider.

It is a 5 step process of:

1. measuring carbon emissions
2. identifying the risks and opportunities associated with these emissions
3. setting goals for carbon emissions reduction
4. identifying and implementing targeted strategies to achieve these reductions
5. measuring and monitoring the reduction strategy

With a global consensus on the need to significantly reduce CO2 emissions over the period to 2050, scrutiny of carbon in business processes will be a major feature of best practice management for all organisations. The carbon content of goods and services will increasingly influence buying decisions.

Business owners and managers will need to rethink the way many business activities are conducted.

The preferred method of driving the necessary CO2 emissions reductions is a cap and trade scheme where aggregate emissions are capped at a level that is consistent with the government’s carbon emissions reduction target or treaty obligations and only this amount of allowable emission units (permits) will be issued. Emission trading of itself does not achieve emissions reductions. Over time lowering the carbon emissions cap will require greater carbon emission reductions by liable companies.

The role of a market based emissions trading scheme is to set a price on carbon resulting in abatement of carbon emissions where the cost of doing so is less than the carbon price.

Putting a price on carbon establishes a market wide value for carbon, and creates both carbon risks and carbon opportunities.

Managing the carbon in business processes thus becomes a critical issue for business owners, investors, managers, suppliers and customers.

As well as the obvious commercial aspects of a price on carbon and the impact of the carbon price on business decisions there are governance issues as well:

• Will the community continue to allow high carbon emitting companies a licence to operate?
• Will financiers and insurers continue to lend on and insure assets with a high carbon impact?
• Will investors continue to support high carbon businesses?

Adopting appropriate strategies to build a robust Carbon Management Response Plan for the business is essential to preserve business value and enable the many opportunities in a low carbon economy to be harvested.

This curve describes the evolution of an organisation as it moves through the different stages of managing carbon emissions in its value chain.

Stage one represents the conscious awakening of organisations to carbon emissions but without the knowledge or maturity within their systems thinking to begin taking action.

As an organisation recognises the need to take responsibility for carbon emissions, it commits to investing in capacity building programs which in turn results in the ability to implement robust carbon systems & processes for managing carbon effectively. The greater the carbon 'capacity' of the organisation the better at performance managing carbon emissions it will be.  By building capacity the organisation can move quickly through stages 2 to 4.

Carbon capacity is a function of the evolved knowledge, learning & technical infrastructure that the organisation has.

The vertical axis describes the level of capability embedded within the organisation, as it moves up this axis the more competent and capable it becomes.

Those organisations at the top of the curve are regarded as high performance carbon management organisation because of the carbon capacity that they have built up and deployed into the business.

At each stage of development an organisation will commit to different programs of support to enable it to move up the performance management curve, such as training.

CTI enables organisations to move to stage 4 quickly by helping with the capacity building of staff through carbon management training.

Staff training enables internal ownership of the behavioural & decision making changes required for organisations to adapt to the low carbon economy.

Well-trained workers are able to reduce risks and harvest opportunities on a continuous basis that will pay dividends to the business.