Climate change and net zero

The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership will be running an in-person event to launch their Low Carbon and Circular Economy Fund.

This new fund is targeted at low carbon and food and drinks manufacturing sector across the West Midlands. The GBSLEP will offer up to £30,000 of revenue funding to exemplary projects, with 30% match funding from the project proposal. A total of £240,000 will be available to support these projects from businesses located in the GBSLEP, Black Country LEP (BCLEP) and Coventry and Warkwickshire LEP (CWLEP) areas.

The networking breakfast event will take place on 21 September, 7:45 – 9:30. During the event, the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP will be running a "speed networking" session where you can pitch your business to other businesses. You can find out more and register here.

Our Head of Climate Change & Energy Policy, Emma Piercy, is undertaking a PGDip in Sustainable Business at Cambridge – and is now working on an ‘Analysis Paper’ looking at a sustainability challenge in the food and drink sector – specifically looking at the role FDF can play in helping to drive change, and then applying those conclusions to the Net Zero policy area.  This will be followed by a second assignment around creating an action plan on account of recommendations from the analysis paper.

As part of the research she is reaching out to different stakeholder groups – and there is a specific questionnaire for food and drink manufacturers, and it is open to both members and non-members of FDF: there are 9 multiple choice questions with the option to add additional comments – and 3 free text questions.  All information gathered is confidential and non-attributable unless explicit permission is otherwise given.  The final paper will be viewed only by Cambridge University and key FDF staff.

If you would like to participate in this survey – you can do so via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DR8ZR3R

Responses to the survey are requested by Friday 20th August, but will be open a little longer.  Thank you for your support and I look forward to hearing your views!

Today WRAP have announced that they have extended their Courtauld commitment to 2030, with renewed targets on food waste, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water.

1. On food waste, to deliver against UN SDG 12.3: a 50% per capita reduction in food waste by 2030 vs the UK 2007 baseline (covering manufacture, retail, hospitality and food service, and household)
2. On GHG emissions, to deliver a 50% absolute reduction in GHG emissions associated with food and drink consumed in the UK by 2030 (against a 2015 baseline)
3. On water, for businesses to increase water use efficiency in their own operations and contribute to achieving sustainable water management to improve the quality and availability of water at catchment scale with an overall target that by 2030 50% of fresh food is sources from areas with sustainable water management

You can find a summary of progress to date in the Courtauld Commitment Annual Report.

At the same time, and to enable smaller businesses to engage with Courtauld Commitment 2030, WRAP has introduced an Associate Membership model.

The Goal 13 Impact Platform is a not-for-profit initiative led by 6 partner organisations (CBI, A4S, Chapter Zero, the Met Office, Dell Technologies and Deloitte).

The objective of the initiative is to build a free and open repository of corporate climate actions to facilitate learning and collaboration in the run up to COP26.

Information is gathered via structured interviews with organisations who want to tell their climate story; there’s no constraint on size, sector or geography. The interviews explore business commitments and targets, drivers for change and how you organise your climate action, key initiatives and their impact, and barriers experienced, and lessons learned.

As of today, the Platform have reached out to c. 2,900 organisations and carried out c. 300 interviews. By COP26, the Platform hope to have 1,000 businesses interviewed, using the data to deliver in-depth insights into business climate action, informing policy makers and showcasing the private sector as a key component to achieving net zero. A beta version of the site can be found here: http://boomi.to/g13

Their initial report provides an overview of the insights to date here Goal 13 Impact Platform: Emerging Findings. They plan to publish an update prior to COP26 to power discussions and inspire more businesses to take action.

Get involved and showcase your climate journey

The Goal 13 Impact Platform would like to offer FDF members an opportunity to participate and help shape the Platform to best contribute to climate action. The only requirement is to make time for a 1 hour interview, or by returning a questionnaire, reviewing the notes captured, and when ready, agreeing for them to be published on the Platform.

Additionally, they're encouraging all contributors to get organisations within their supply/value chain onto the platform, typically as a complement to any ongoing engagement. They would be happy to follow-up with your supply / value chains and encourage them to participate.

Sign up via the platform or email us here: Goal13ImpactPlatform@deloitte.co.uk, or viv.raval@cbi.org.uk. 

On 27 April, in a webinar with key note speech from UK Government’s Net Zero Business Champion, Andrew Griffith MP, the FDF announced its ambition on behalf of the sector to reach Net Zero by 2040.

To provide further support to food and drink businesses, the FDF will also produce a Roadmap to Net Zero Project and accompanying ‘handbook for businesses. The Roadmap and Handbook will be launched at COP26 in November.

Throughout the year, the FDF will also deliver a wider programme of events in order to engage with FDF members and the wider sector on the journey to Net Zero.

Watch the full launch webinar