Chapter 1

Prepare

  1. Introduction
  2. Step 1: Build the case for climate action
  3. Step 2: Assess the state of sustainability in your company and industry
    1. Get started: assess your company's position within its industry
    2. Conduct a sustainability materiality assessment
    3. Review business and associated emissions trends in your industry
    4. Conduct peer review and identify climate front-runners
  4. Step 3: Define your climate ambition
  5. Step 4: Optimize your organization for climate success
  6. Learn more: Build climate abilities
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Conduct peer review and identify climate front-runners

How you can leverage front-runners to define your ambition

To identify best practices, the gaps in your industry, and opportunities for leveraging low-carbon growth, it is valuable to conduct a peer review and identify your industry’s climate front-runners.

One practical approach for conducting a peer review is to assess your organization’s capabilities against those of your peers in terms of emissions baseline, targets, product/service portfolio, procurement standards, governance, and other relevant metrics.

Climate-related benchmarking against front-runners includes analyzing their Scope 1-3 baseline emissions and targets. To do so, you can assess their recently announced and/or completed climate actions, comparing their declared goals with what they have accomplished.

You can also analyze the climate-related governance of your peers, including leadership positions and structure, compensation mechanisms based on sustainability, presence of any internal carbon prices, and other accountability structures designed to promote sustainability. Additionally, you should analyze their partnerships, participation in industry initiatives, and hiring patterns. This will help you understand the scale of organizational change you will have to prepare for and implement when the time comes.

All of this will allow your organization to understand how it is performing vis-à-vis its peers and assess feasible targets and timelines.

Taking stock

Step 1 can help you understand why your company should pursue Net Zero and why it is critical to take climate action. Step 2 begins to paint a picture of what climate topics are relevant and material and how to feasibly accomplish climate actions within your industry. You are now better prepared to decide how your company should move forward.