Rethinking sustainability targets

Unitrust's Compliance & ESG Director, Sarah Griffin explains the approach we are taking on our journey towards greater sustainability and ultimately becoming a net zero business.

Recently, I have been thinking about our long-term sustainability targets and, specifically, whether changing one should automatically be seen as a negative.

Like many companies, we originally set our net zero target for 2030 because we wanted to be ambitious. However, as we have worked through what that actually meant in practice, it became clear that 2030 was increasingly out of reach if we wanted to achieve it through genuine emissions reduction.

The issue is not simply that getting to net zero by 2030 is too difficult for us to do as a company. It is about how we would get there. Based on our current emissions profile and reduction pathway, the only realistic way we could achieve the 2030 target would be to rely heavily on carbon offsetting, and that is not the approach we want to build our strategy around.

Carbon removals and other credible neutralisation measures may ultimately have a role for genuinely residual emissions, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors. However, there is an important distinction between reducing the emissions generated by your organisation and value chain and compensating for emissions elsewhere. Offsetting should not become a substitute for making the reductions that are actually within our ability to influence.

There is also the wider issue of Scope 3 emissions, which is much more complicated because it involves organisations outside your direct control. Some of our suppliers are not yet on a net zero journey. However, we have worked with many of our suppliers for years and they are an important part of our business.

In theory, we could decide that we could no longer work with them because their own targets didn't align with ours. That might improve our own emissions profile over time. But would it necessarily deliver the best environmental outcome? For us, the answer is no.

We would rather work closely with our suppliers, understand where they are on their own journey and look at how we can encourage better measurement and reduction, and where we can genuinely influence and support change.. Sustainability should not just be about making your own numbers look better by transferring emissions or responsibility somewhere else in the value chain. As a consequence, we have moved our net zero target to 2040.

I think there is an important point here about setting targets in the first place. I absolutely believe organisations should set ambitious targets. Without them, it is very easy for sustainability to become something that sits in a strategy document without driving any real change.

However, I also think we need to be prepared to revisit those targets when we understand more. Setting a target does not mean you have to defend the original date at all costs if the evidence tells you that the route to achieving it is not the right one.

Clearly, moving the date from 2030 to 2040 changes the timescale of our ambition, and I believe it is important to acknowledge that. But it does not mean stepping back from action.

For Unitrust, moving to 2040 is about putting the credibility of the pathway ahead of defending a date we no longer believe represents the most responsible approach. It is about having a target that we believe we can achieve primarily through real reductions in emissions, while continuing to work with the suppliers and partners who are part of our wider Scope 3 footprint.

We will still need ambitious interim targets, transparent measurement and year-on-year reductions. Ch.anging the final date cannot become an excuse for slowing progress in the meantime. For me, that is the important distinction.

There is a useful discussion around the role of carbon offsetting here for anyone working through their own net zero strategy: Net Zero Carbon Guide: What about carbon offsetting?

I would be really interested to hear how your organisation is approaching this and if you have changed a sustainability target because the original route no longer felt like the right one. And I would be particularly keen to hear how others are approaching Scope 3 and suppliers who are at a very different stage on their own net zero journey