3 WAYS TO DETERMINE YOUR CLIMATE 

CHANGE STRATEGY

by Andrew J. Hoffman and John Woody

Once you’ve decided to be a greener corporate citizen, while adhering to climate change regulations, the next step is to determine how moving in this direction might be a competitive advantage for your business.

Start by doing a careful analysis of your company’s position on climate change and develop a strategy to create opportunities. The ultimate goal of any good business strategy is to create a measure of control over your future business environment. This process takes time. Think of your climate change strategy as a series of graduated steps, with some actions that are required now and others that reflect the extent to which your company seeks to strategically engage the issue. The timing of your strategy is directly related to the extent to which you wish to become engaged. The more advanced the step, the more urgent the timing.

Consider examining the following three steps as you prepare to develop a climate strategy.

1. Know your carbon exposure. Create an emissions inventory and assess your carbon footprint; then you can ask how potential changes in policy and market price will affect the positioning of your products and services in the months ahead and in the long term. Some companies measure actual emissions, while others estimate emissions using fuel-based calculations (based on methodologies such as those created by, the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme, the U.S. Department of Energy and others). These methodologies use the energy value of the fuel consumed multiplied by its carbon intensity (pounds of CO2 emitted per million BTU). What you find when doing this exercise might shock you. Shoe manufacturer Timberland was surprised to discover that the major carbon impact of its product came from the manufacture of its raw materials–not from the transportation of its materials and final product, as they had expected.

Understand your exposure first, then make a plan.

2. Take action. Once you know your footprint, reduce it. Then assess your business opportunities in doing so. Companies generally begin this assessment with a focus on risk management and bottom-line protection, which focuses their efforts on efficiency opportunities. If you have not looked at efficiency, achieving significant savings is attainable. If you have divisions in a region of the world that already has carbon controls, this decision has been made for you. If not, take advantage of this brief vacuum in time and take action now, at your own pace, rather than waiting for regulation’s enforced timetable.

3. Influence the policy-development process. There’s an old adage that says, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Policies will set the rules of the game and change the competitive landscape, favoring certain actions, companies, and industries. Companies can offer valuable insights into ways that will yield the most cost-effective and efficient policies. The reality is that governments can’t do it alone. They don’t have the capacity to understand the implications of the different policy options on all sectors of the economy. But to gain a seat at the table, you must first take credible action and develop legitimate expertise to bring to bear. Industry associations can provide useful forums for all types of companies to engage in the policy arena.

In the end, you don’t need to study photos of receding glaciers or pore over the latest scientific reports to know that climate change is already happening. Just look at your marketplace, your competitors, and your boardroom. Some companies are adapting out of near-term operational necessity, others are acting to mitigate long-term strategic vulnerabilities, and the most forward-thinking are devising ways to profit from clean energy and efficient technology.

What are you doing?

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

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