Grasping the Nettle: How voluntary corporate action can accelerate global decarbonization
An increasing number of corporate commitments suggests widespread and growing enthusiasm for pursuing net zero status. What, then, is the significance of the decertification of climate leaders, including Microsoft and Walmart?
Far from a temporary setback or an isolated circumstance, those being dropped from the net zero rolls reveal that aspiring to, never mind achieving, net zero status is beset by structural challenges that make success, practically speaking, impossible. If corporations are to lead our collective efforts to create a sustainable economy, a radical reframing of why and how companies invest in decarbonization is required, together with a redefinition of what counts as success.
Specifically, the current net zero paradigm over-emphasizes measurement, is too focused on direct carbon reduction, and mistakes corporate net zero as a cause, rather than a consequence, of system-level change.
If corporations are to leverage their precious and limited voluntary climate investments to greatest effect, we must:
- privilege inexpensive but effective carbon inventory estimation over costly and unnecessary measurement that exhausts budget and patience;
- create a deep and efficient market for carbon insets rather than concentrating on supplier engagement and direct reductions; and
- aggregate and focus support on small-scale, broad scope, projects that redesign the production of key commodities around radical decarbonization at the system level, rather than prioritizing total tons abated in the near term.
Dr. Michael E. Raynor - Bio
Michael E. Raynor (Ivey MBA '94) regularly turns his original research and high-profile thought leadership into effective, practical solutions. Over more than 25 years, 15 as a Managing Director in Deloitte, he has broken new ground in strategy, innovation, managing uncertainty, and sustainability. Most recently, he has been working to accelerate global decarbonization through transformative new emissions-reduction strategies for hard-to-abate industrial sectors. He aims to continue working with the most ambitious organizations to bring inventive new ideas to bear on the world’s most challenging problems.
Michael has worked in a variety of industries, including life sciences, medical devices, telecommunications, high technology, financial services, media, and consumer products. He has helped clients with competitive and corporate strategy, product and service innovation, risk management, and, most recently, setting and meeting corporate net zero commitments.
His books (The Innovator's Solution; The Strategy Paradox; The Three Rules) are bestsellers (New York Times, Canada’s Globe & Mail) and award-winners internationally (BusinessWeek; Financial Times), and more than one hundred articles and monographs have shaped management discourse over decades (Harvard Business Review; Strategic Management Journal; Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences). Michael also educates business leaders as an adjunct professor (University of Maryland) and guest lecturer in MBA and executive education programs (IMD, Ivey).
Michael has a doctorate from the Harvard Business School ('00), an MBA with distinction from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario ('94), and an undergraduate degree in Philosophy magna cum laude from Harvard University ('90). He lives near Toronto, Canada.
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