Back in May, the IES pledged to do its part in reducing our environmental impact by signing up to the Pledge to Net Zero initiative. The IES is striving to reduce our overall emissions in line with the well below 2°C climate change scenario, as outlined in Paris Climate Agreement 2015, using science-based targets.
As we seek to lead by example in promoting environmental science and sustainability, we've now gone one step further and committed to not only reducing our GHG emissions, but aiming to achieve climate neutrality, by pledging to the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now campaign.
Governments, organisations, and individuals can all pledge to the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now campaign. In doing so, pledges commit to:
- Measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions for an agreed-upon period of time
- Reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible
- Offset remaining emissions with UN Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).
The first two commitments overlap with those of the Pledge to Net Zero initiative: they require us to measure, reduce, and report on our GHG emissions and both initiatives support the use of the GHG Protocol standard in measuring these emissions; this standard allowed us to calculate our baseline emissions data. In addition, our pledge to Climate Neutral Now requires us to actively offset the unavoidable emissions through the purchase of UN CERs.
Over the next few months, we will be releasing an update to our environmental audit and detailing the additional steps we take to ensure we reduce our emissions and achieve climate neutrality. We hope by demonstrating our commitment to climate action through these two pledges that we not only achieve a truly representative example of how to minimise impact on the environment, but also encourage others to follow in our footsteps in joining either (or both!) the Pledge to Net Zero initiative, or the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now campaign.
