At OceanBlocks, we have come together to create something exceptional—an innovative team of visionaries dedicated to pioneering and scaling advanced, intelligent solutions that help sustain our world. Our diverse tribe combines leading tech with deep sustainability know-how plus loads of industry experience to pursue one goal: supercharging decision makers’ net-zero journeys.
Evaluating Progress
Most of the public sector and some of the private sector have already developed sound environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies and are acting on them to combat climate change. However, as OceanBlocks has discovered through its consulting journey with numerous clients within different sectors, they eventually hit a wall—huge emitters who predominantly function on the commodities side of the carbon emissions equation must address significant hurdles to reduce emissions continually.
It becomes increasingly challenging to continue lowering emissions when companies reach the midway point of their strategic playbook. Once some of the holes have been plugged into areas of the business, and greater awareness and accountability have been achieved, then only incremental developments are realised. It is much easier to fix or adapt what is easy to identify when reducing carbon emissions. However, carbon accounts reach a form of stagnation when they run out of innovative ideas to reduce emissions consistently or need to identify areas that can be addressed. The cap-out rate then forces companies to rely on purchasing verifiable carbon offsets to help meet carbon obligations. Furthermore, companies pledge to the general public and their shareholders to achieve carbon reduction milestones as planned in their strategies.
It becomes challenging to interpret the failure points at these intersections of the transition as the general public might lose faith in the organisations’ ability to reduce emissions further as intended. The risk widens when strategies need to be bridged more quickly and when appropriate alternatives are nowhere to be found.
Stagnated Progress is a Major Risk
Organisations that fail to meet their carbon reduction pledges and milestones face numerous risks. These can include but are not limited to reputational damage due to public mistrust, financial penalties for non-compliance with relevant regulations, possible legal repercussions from shareholders or other stakeholders, loss of business due to customer/partner dissatisfaction, as well as missed opportunities from failed initiatives.
Moreover, failing to meet these pledges and milestones hinders progress towards achieving a net-zero economy. Recent studies have revealed that companies need to drastically reduce emissions over the next decade in order to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C by 2100. Without sufficient efforts from organisations to reduce emissions at the required rate, a climate crisis is almost inevitable.
Organisations seeking to meet their obligations must implement an effective strategy and invest in innovative technology solutions for their sector or market, which could involve applying existing technologies such as renewable energy sources and smart meters in more creative ways or developing entirely new solutions like clean hydrogen fuel cells or carbon capture systems. By taking action now and investing in advanced technologies, organisations can make meaningful progress towards achieving their short-term targets while also helping to protect our planet for future generations.
The Critical Importance of New Technologies
Innovative technology is seen as one of the most crucial ways to tackle climate change, making it a key focus for many organisations. OceanBlocks saw the gap in the market earlier than most by identifying how new technologies could be used to bridge this cap-out rate or stagnation period, helping companies meet their net-zero goals without relying as heavily on the purchase of offsets. Nevertheless, it is realised that some organisations will only become partially carbon-neutral due to the nature of their business requirements and processes. For example, companies that dig up earth’s finite resources will inevitably pollute more than they can reduce, and in these instances, the notion of cap-and-trade becomes necessary.
The need for companies to look to innovation is driven by the fact that carbon emissions are increasingly becoming more expensive and challenging to reduce. Innovative technology can help bridge the gap between where companies are now and their net-zero aspirations. Modern innovative technologies use data, analytics, AI, blockchain and automation to identify and address more complex, hard-to-quantify sources of emissions and create a much more comprehensive view of a business’s carbon footprint.
By leveraging these new technologies, companies can identify areas where they are underperforming compared to their peers, uncover previously hidden sources of emissions or areas where they can further optimise operations, track trends over time, and strategise plans with long-term perspectives on how best to reach their net-zero targets. Innovative technology allows them to make real-time decisions based on current evidence and data-driven insights, allowing them to develop strategies that focus on creating lasting outcomes rather than short-term solutions.
Ultimately, innovative technology will enable companies to save costs while still achieving sustainability and ESG objectives—creating a cyclical effect where future investments into innovative technologies and initiatives become increasingly more profitable as net-zero goals become progressively closer year after year.
Problem: Companies need help to reduce their carbon emissions and hit net-zero goals. They require further help when they reach the point of stagnation.
The Short-Sighted Approach: Short-term strategies can only get businesses so far, leaving them stuck at a cap-out rate with no innovative ideas to continue reducing emissions, which means companies have to rely heavily on expensive offset purchases in order to meet their obligations.
Solution: Innovative technology is the key to tackling climate change, and helping companies reach their net-zero goals without relying as heavily on costly offsets is the key. Nevertheless, organisations must have long, and short-term strategies working in tandem and also allocate sufficient resources to exploring new technologies and intellectual property that may propel them and the industry in which they operate to take wider strides on the journey to net zero.
OceanBlocks looks towards advanced technologies as the world’s decarbonisation toolkit, enabling long-term visionary approaches that will help reduce emissions year-on-year.
OceanBlocks looks at technical solutions such as sensors, data analytics, smart systems and networks to develop cost-effective renewable energy or efficient fossil fuel burning that would enable customers to reduce their carbon emissions independently from other external factors. This way, they can ensure that their work towards net-zero emissions will have tangible results and ultimately help them achieve their sustainability goals faster.
Conclusion
As the world continues to face considerable changes, technological advancements are driving us towards a more interconnected future. By using big data and artificial intelligence together with powerful computing capabilities, smart networks can be formed from blockchains, allowing governments to make decisions that better anticipate natural disasters, for instance, while also providing societies everywhere with greater clarity on how we coexist as one planet.
We live in a new era where data-driven predictions can save lives and build robust infrastructure for tomorrow’s economy. By proactively reducing carbon emissions, we will create a more sustainable world and one with advanced technology solutions capable of repurposing what would otherwise have become waste into valuable resources. Soon enough, OceanBlocks will make it possible to easily acquire verified carbon credit offsets so companies can contribute to planet conservation efforts.
Get in touch now to discover how progressing from stagnation could help your organisation achieve climate action goals faster than ever before.