In 2015 The B Team companies set a bold aspiration: to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Today more than 650 businesses, with more than US $15.6 trillion in market capital have made climate commitments. Yet the climate crisis is growing and we must concede we are not acting fast enough. Two years on, 2018 is set to be a landmark year to demonstrate the progress business has made on our commitments so far, and pledge to step up our action before 2020.
With this progress report, we aim to showcase the efforts that are underway and advance the movement towards a just transition. We set out to assess our achievements, share challenges and lessons learned, and provide case studies and examples for other businesses considering the journey to net-zero.
We call on businesses to join us by demonstrating their progress against their climate commitments in 2018, and to step up those commitments to drive further, faster action towards net-zero.
The B Team also invites high emitting companies and global market leaders to join the Net-Zero by 2050 Team. Our Net-Zero 2050 Team is a leadership group of CEOs from The B Team companies and beyond, who are working together to accelerate the just transition to Net-Zero GHG emissions by 2050.
For more information on this report or the Net-Zero 2050 Team, get in touch with Emily Hickson, Senior Manager, Net-Zero by 2050, eh@bteam.org.
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Gmail Peter Burgess
Management Metrics for Net Zero by 2050
1 message
Peter Burgess
To: 'Emily Hickson ... Net Zero by 2050'
Bcc: Claudia Freed
Dear Emily
I have been following the activities of the B-Team since it was put together several years ago when I was still relatively young.
I read engineering at Cambridge in the late 1950s and then read economics before graduating in 1961. Subsequently I became a Chartered Accountant in London with Cooper Brothers (now morphed into PwC). After some professional experience I started doing management accounting and became a very young CFO in the United States as management information systems became fashionable.. I was good at profit improvement because I was not inclined for fiddle the books but more interested in fixing the factory and/or fixing a product and this was a very good way of getting more profit.
Mid career I started doing 'consulting' work but this did not go really well ... someone from the UK telling American executives what to do was not a great idea.Though they had been employing me as a (low cost) part of their management team for several years prior being independent did not work well! I did. however, get consulting assignments in the international area both private assignments and work for the World Bank, the UN and others. This was an eye-opener because the management systems of these organizations were to my mind in the stone age or before! Without management, anything goes ... and it was clear to me ... as an accountant who was quite good at 'following the money', that there was a massive amount of abuse and/or sloppiness in what was going on. My attempts to address not only the recipients of corrupt benefits but also the enablers of corruption (the writers of the checks) did not go down well and eventually my utility as an independent consultant diminished. Before that happened I did have opportunities to do assignments in around 50 different countries, which gives me something of a world view!
My interest in better metrics has not abated. The recently distributed report Net Zero by 2050 is a good read but at the end of the read I have really not learned very much ... all the stories I have heard before, and I have no idea about the progress and performance of the various initiatives. Essentially there is a complete absence of numbering ... and my position is that without numbering, anyone can say anything and get away with it!
I know numbering is not easy ... but it is 20+ years since John Elkington first talked about the Triple Bottom Line, and one might have expected that some sort of a reasonably widely accepted numbering system would have emerged by now. I thought this was on the B-Team agenda several years ago and reached out to no avail ... so I try again.
There are many many issues to address ... but one idea is that every company on the planet should be numbered and held accountable for the amount of unsustainability that they are responsible for ... and in fact the same idea can also be applied to every person on the planet ... and all the products flowing through the socio-enviro-economic system.
Rough numbers suggest that the US economy is one of the most inefficient on the planet, and of course rich consumers are massively more dangerous for the future of the planet than poor people.
To the extent that ideas like this can be helpful to your work ... please get in touch ... sooner rather than later because I am well into my declining years and therefore in something of a hurry!
Best regards
Peter
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Peter Burgess ... Founder and CEO
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
True Value Impact Accounting ... Multi Dimension for ALL the Capitals
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'Emily Hickson ... Net Zero by 2050'