| The carbon hype approaches the tipping point - a societal revolution? |
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Low carbon economies, replacing fossil energy by regenerative power, a breakthrough in energy efficiency and dematerialisation – this has been a vision held by a few prophets for 30 years or more, but nothing significant happened. These days however, we are witnesses to a very exciting and critical moment in history: The actual ‘hype’ around carbon disclosure and reduction will either develop into a robust ‘change of values’ setting in business, politics and private behaviour, or the trend will break down, due to too many players returning to their old behavioural patterns, reanimating the old arguments - such as stressing cost and feasibility, competition on the world markets, etc. Why are economies, even the capital markets, trying to go ‘sustainable’, giving a price to pollution or carbon emissions, and making sustainability a priority in branding, marketing campaigns, product development and structuring of financial products? Why is ‘going green’ not anymore a “nice to have” but suddenly essential? What is different today? The author Malcom Gladwell compares the apparently spontaneous and rapid evolution of trends to the nature of epidemics. Once a trend reaches a certain critical point, the tipping point, it tends to ‘breakout’ overcoming borders and continents. I believe we have already passed the tipping point with regard to climate change and sustainability. The trend is irreversible and the (economic) systems will return to a new ‘normal’ condition – with carbon and sustainability very high on the priority list in the boardrooms. The right carbon strategy might already be a question of ‘to be or not to be’ (see interview with Paul Dickinson), as the financial markets honour future ‘eco-safe’ companies and try to sort out the dinosaurs of the future, the companies which are not evolving fast enough to survive this kind of climate change. Corporate players now have to look to specialised rating organisations like the SAM group or the Carbon Disclosure project. Carbon neutrality and sustainability are no longer a matter of compliance, but a matter of competitiveness, shareholder value and consequently survival of the company – certainly at least for its top level management. It is PE’s mission to work with companies to meet these challenges. We welcome many new and exciting clients with great brands trusting in our expertise to help them excel in this area. More information: m.betz@pe-international.com back to the newsletter |
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