The Sustainability Leadership Program (SLP) was launched in its current form in 2020 to support organisations in creating healthy, resilient and vibrant communities. The program has been designed to be completely virtual and allows members to progress at their own pace to reach their sustainability goals, with the flexibility to deliver in-person as we go back to office-based settings.
The SLP has 4 steps that members complete to achieve a truly sustainable business. Members learn how to identify the scopes of emissions and recognise sources that contribute to their business’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Based on international standards, global best practices and local approaches, Sustainability Leadership calculates the associated emissions using the most up-to-date emission factors. As members progress through the program they expand the focus of measurement to all environmental, social and economic topics and compile these topics into a sustainability report. To learn more about the SLP please visit the Sustainability Leadership Program page.
Despite the challenges the pandemic continued to pose in 2021, our members kept making significant progress on their sustainability journeys through the newly developed Sustainability Leadership Program, including tracking their GHG emissions, setting base year emissions, selecting achievable science-informed targets and establishing action plans.
Sustainability Leadership has conducted research based on the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth report, and updated our program’s targets to support our members in maintaining global warming levels below 1.5 degrees celsius by 2050. These targets are a fixed goal for our members to work towards reducing their GHG emissions, in comparison to their set base year emissions. To accelerate businesses reaching net-zero by 2050, members of the SLP are aligning their reduction targets with our updated SLP science-informed targets to reach net-zero emissions by 2045 (previously 2050). In 2021, the program welcomed an additional member. Unfortunately, the pandemic continued to put additional pressure on members and resulted in a loss of 7 memberships, all of whom were small and medium sized organisations.
One year after the program launch, 4 members are observing the program and 10 members have successfully transitioned into Step 1 of the new Sustainability Leadership Program. These members are actively tracking their GHG emissions and have completed Annual GHG Inventory Report, 40% of these members have set their base year emissions and targets. While 30% of our step 1 members have updated their targets to align with SLP’s new science-informed targets and are developing action plans and Green Teams to implement and reach these new goals. The referred members are close to progressing to Step 2 of the program and expanding the scope of sustainability measurements by engaging with their stakeholders.
Moving forward, we expect that the remaining 60% of Step 1 members without a base year emissions set, will have collected enough data at the end of 2022 to set these emissions and their science-informed targets. To date, we are supporting 40% of step 1 members in the formalisation of a Green Team / Sustainability Committee. To learn more about our member’s progress check out their member profile.
As of the most recent reporting year 2021, our current members reduced their emissions by 22,573 tCO2e, the equivalent of taking 6,916 passenger vehicles off the road for one year. Sustainability Leadership has now contributed to reducing emissions by 248,926 tCO2e since the organisation’s launch as Sustainable Hamilton in 2011. Together our current members have committed to reducing their emissions by 23,830 tCO2e by 2030, the equivalent to taking 7,301 passenger vehicles off the road for one year, contextually this accounts for approximately 4% of daily QEW traffic off the road for one year.
