Make CO₂ reduction a strategic lever for your organisation

Step 1: Map your CO₂ emissions

The first step towards decarbonisation is gaining insight. By measuring your organisation’s carbon footprint, you identify where the greatest levers for reduction lie. In doing so, you distinguish between three emission categories:

• Scope 1: direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (e.g. combustion in owned installations, emissions from company vehicles)

• Scope 2: indirect emissions from purchased energy (e.g. electricity, heat generated externally)

• Scope 3: all other indirect emissions in the value chain (e.g. supply chain, transport, purchased goods and services, commuting, use of sold products)

A baseline measurement of your carbon footprint provides the foundation. But measurement alone isn’t enough. Only when you understand where the risks and opportunities lie can you develop a thoughtful and realistic reduction plan.

Step 2: Analyse risks and opportunities

Measuring helps you get a grip on the numbers. But it’s only through risk and opportunity analysis that you gain true strategic insight. Ask yourself:

• Is your organisation exposed to rising carbon prices?

• Does inaction on climate policy pose a reputational risk?

• Are there procurement requirements or customer demands you need to meet?

A thorough risk and opportunity analysis requires input from multiple departments, such as finance, operations and legal. This creates not just shared awareness, but also a sense of urgency. That is crucial to build support for change and to ensure long-term stability and growth.

Step 3: Develop a realistic and robust CO₂ reduction plan

After the baseline measurement and analysis, it’s time to create a plan. A robust CO₂ reduction plan aligns with the organisation’s strategic choices. Think of investment decisions at board level, operational decisions at site level, discussions with investors and a review of the procurement strategy.

A credible plan not only focuses on meeting European targets - halving emissions by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050 - but also takes into account what is realistic within the organisation’s context. That means daring to prioritise, to delay certain measures, and to revise others when necessary. By explicitly stating which measures are feasible and which are (still) not, you avoid CO₂ reduction becoming just a wish list without follow-through.

Step 4: Embrace decarbonisation as a learning process

Decarbonisation is rarely a linear path, don’t expect your emissions to fall evenly year after year. In practice, decarbonisation is a learning process that requires flexibility and an open mindset.

As your organisation and the experts involved mature, the plan evolves too:

• scope 3 is expanded with new and more refined data;

• assumptions are adjusted;

• objectives are sharpened or revised.

The process is dynamic and depends on economic conditions, technical feasibility and available budgets. Learning and adjusting are part of sustainable progress.

Step 5: Embed your CO₂ plan within the organisation

A strong transition plan doesn’t live in an Excel file or a OneDrive folder. It’s embedded at the core of your organisation:

• integrated into financial and governance processes;

• linked to investment plans;

• assigned to data owners;

• managed via a protocol for updates and version control.

Employees change and structures evolve, but the quality, continuity and transparency of your data and transition plan must remain intact and continue to improve, even as the context changes.