Portsmouth and South East Hampshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry

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Carbon Management in small and medium-sized enterprises

The report on the research project below can be found here  

Cost savings and competitive advantage

The Chambers in Hampshire and Isle of Wight are delighted to have the opportunity of working with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sustainable Business Partnership and the University of Southampton on this key research project.

We would like to encourage our members to become involved in order to inform this research and help ensure that the guidance it produces meets your needs.

The Project In Brief

Energy efficiency and carbon footprinting are becoming increasingly vital business management issues. The Chamber is working to produce guidance to help our members take advantage of the opportunities presented by managing these issues.

We would like to offer you the chance to help us shape this guidance to reflect the needs of our members by taking part in this short survey:

Click here to take the: Carbon Management Survey

All participants are eligible to receive the guidance document and can apply for the opportunity to receive one-to-one guidance on planning their carbon management strategy. Please be advised, there are a limited number of spaces.

For more information on the project and the benefits of managing your carbon footprint, can be found below. Otherwise, please follow this link to the survey.

Confidentiality:

• Only aggregated results will be presented in any reports or publications produced; therefore your responses will remain anonymous.
• Your details will not be passed on to third parties.

Thank you for your time and we hope that you will be able to assist us in this exciting new research.

Project Partners

The Project In Depth

Project Aim:

To produce a ‘Carbon Management' guidance document for SMEs, providing information on:

• How carbon footprinting, reporting and offsetting affect your business
• Guidance, tools and support that are applicable to SMEs.
• How to get started on managing your carbon emissions and get the most out of the process.

What are the Benefits of taking part in the survey?

To take full advantage of this research you may choose to receive the final guidance document, and/or have the chance to receive one-on-one guidance as a case study company.

Carbon Management guidance document:

This document will be sent to you via e-mail on completion of the project (May 2009).

It will provide your business with information regarding the following carbon management issues:

• Carbon/energy reduction and efficiency
• Carbon footprinting & offsetting (and becoming carbon neutral
• Reporting your carbon footprint

Depending on your current level of carbon management the guidance will aim to help you:

• Identify the management tools/techniques applicable to your business
• Gain maximum advantage from carbon management (by implementing the right tools/techniques for you business)
• Plan for long term carbon management

Case Study Companies

During the project some companies will be eligible to receive on-to-one advice regarding their carbon management strategy.

The aim of this exercise is to test the management approaches developed for the carbon guidance document in 'real world' business situations. Case-study results will be used to refine the guidance document (referred to above).

Please note that we are looking to work with companies at all levels of carbon management/footprinting, including those that:

• Have taken no action
• Have taken some action
• Are very proactive

What is Carbon Management?

Carbon management encompasses:

• Carbon/energy reduction and efficiency
• Carbon footprinting
• Carbon reporting
• Carbon offsetting (and becoming carbon neutral)

‘Carbon management' has appeared on the business agenda due to mounting pressures for organisations to reduce their carbon emissions and help combat climate change. Large companies and energy intensive sectors are currently seeing most intense pressures to act through legislation and concern from their customers and other interested parties.

However, these pressures have begun, and will continue, to filter down to smaller enterprises through supply chains or through consumer requirements. This is the beginning of a shift which will bring environmental concerns onto the management agenda of all organisations, even through offering services with limited tradition ‘environmental impacts'. This is because carbon emissions are involved in everything we do, from powering manufacturing equipment to heating office space.

For SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) this means that all organisations, irrespective of size, can now be held accountable for their environmental impacts.

What are the benefits to my business?

• Cost savings
• Improve brand image and competitiveness
• Win private and public sector tenders/contracts

As with much environmental management, organisations which adapt to these changes will be able to take advantage of numerous business benefits.

Perhaps the most significant for SMEs is the cost savings. As carbon emissions relate mostly to fossil fuel usage, understanding and reducing your carbon footprint will allow you to reduce your energy costs. This is quite topical at a time when energy prices have been show to be both unstable and increasing. Reduce carbon emissions will act to reduce an organisations vulnerability to such price rises.

Carbon emissions are becoming the key component of environmental performance. Many organisations, such as government departments and larger private sector companies are incorporating environmental criteria into their procurement decisions. Therefore companies that can demonstrate actions to manage their carbon footprint stand a better chance when competing for tenders and contracts.

As an organisations carbon management develops it may begin to exploit its improvements to gain competitive advantage and enhance its brand image. Good environmental performance can help an organisation differentiate its product or service against its competitors. If these claims are verifiable then they carry even more weight.

What are the difficulties for SMEs?

• They have less time, resources or economies of scale than available to larger companies.
• Complex ‘carbon management' may not be relevant to the business or its pressures.
• Guidance, tools and standards seem more focused on larger companies or small scale action (turning off light switches).

The Chambers recognises environmental issues and carbon management do not relate to our members in the same way they do for larger companies (to which a large amount of guidance is focused), or the large budgets or resources required to implement more complex solutions to these problems.

For this reason this project aims to establishing which carbon guidance and tools are applicable to SMEs and how you can make best use of them.