Chapter 4

Reduce

  1. Introduction
  2. Step 1: Understand decarbonization approaches from a macro perspective
  3. Step 2: Explore abatement levers from a company perspective
  4. Step 3: Build your decarbonization roadmap
  5. Step 4: Drive implementation through critical enablers
    1. Get ready: how to leverage critical enablers for implementation success
    2. Make sustainability a central part of your organization
    3. Fund your sustainability journey
    4. Partner in your ecosystem to decarbonize
  6. Learn more
BCG
Explained byBCG

Partner in your ecosystem to decarbonize

How to use your business environment to achieve climate goals through sector initiatives

Sector-wide initiatives will be an essential component of industry and company success in the low-carbon economy, as combating climate change is a collective problem, one which accordingly necessitates collaborative effort and coordination. Combining expertise, co-investing, securing scarce supplies, aggregating demand for climate technologies, sharing best practices, and setting industry standards are all essential options or components of engaging your ecosystems.

Many companies are realizing that they cannot achieve their goals alone and are looking for partners. Your company can also look to either join an existing coalition or build your own. These can range from large cross-industry global coalitions to specialized industry-specific partnerships to overcome particular challenges. Choosing the right partners is critical; a good place to start would be to collaborate with highly committed market leaders in sustainability. You can also engage companies across your value chain in a sustainability dialogue, offering opportunities to collaborate, co-invest, and co-innovate. Additionally, you can engage expert partners with deep climate capabilities and knowledge for advice on making progress on Net Zero.

There are a range of objectives that your partnership with other companies can aim for. A few examples include:

  • Aligning on industry-wide sustainability standards and practices, in line with climate science

  • Creating data transparency for the entire value chain

  • Catalyzing and innovating new solutions

  • Advocating for sector-wide government policies

  • Forming buying groups to aggregate demand and urge suppliers for sustainable materials and products

Finally, you will need to create a strategy for how you will mobilize the partnership. Some examples include investing funds upfront to set up an alliance and build trust and goodwill with your ecosystem and partners; establishing a permanent industry-specific organization/foundation for building strategic climate capabilities; and supporting a non-profit that tracks industry activity against established standards to identify leaders and laggards.