Shrewsbury wealth manager makes carbon neutral pledge

As the COP26 Climate Conference came to an end in Glasgow last week, David Penney, chief executive Penney Financial Partners, said businesses had a responsibility to do more to tackle the looming climate crisis.

“The recent pandemic has been hugely disruptive to our lives but it is climate change that is the great crisis of our age and will eventually have the greatest impact on all of our lives,” said David.

“It is an issue that has to be everybody’s responsibility, particularly businesses that currently account for half of all carbon emissions in the UK. It is for this reason that we have committed in 2021 to become a carbon neutral business.”

Climate change is primarily a problem of too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, creating a cover that traps the sun’s heat energy in an atmospheric bubble, warming the planet and the oceans.

From a business perspective, carbon emissions are generated by the energy consumption across its operations such as heating, air conditioning and lighting in offices, petrol, diesel and electricity for business travel and commuting and waste to landfill.

Since committing to becoming a carbon neutral business at the beginning of 2021, Penney Financial Partners, which is an Appointed Representative of the FTSE 100-listed St. James’s Place Wealth Management, has been measuring its carbon emissions every month across all areas of operations at its Battlefield and Cheltenham offices.

At the end of the year the company the company will then offset the amount of carbon produced to meet the UN sustainable development goals.

This can be as simple as planting trees – each tree absorbs the equivalent of one sixth of a tonne of emitted carbon – to other initiatives including grasslands management, peatland restoration and waste to energy production.

David added: “According to recent research by the British Chambers of Commerce(1), just 11 per cent of businesses are measuring their carbon footprint – a crucial first step in the carbon neutral journey.

“For us, having the knowledge and information has been hugely important in helping drive behaviour changes and so that we can reduce the carbon we use rather than relying solely on investing in offsetting as our ultimate future goal is to become a net zero business where we are producing no excess carbon at all.

“This means fundamental changes to how we work so that we are doing less commuter and business miles, investing in the latest communications technology, becoming a paperless business and embracing the opportunities around renewable energy.

“Over the above this we have also committed to a range of donations to the Woodland Trust to mirror a pledge by St. James’s Place to encourage clients to sign up to a range of different carbon-saving technology-led initiatives.

“The reality is that becoming carbon neutral is not only making a small but important contribution to reducing overall emissions but just makes good business sense.

“Through exploring ways of reducing consumption we are saving money which fundamentally makes us more competitive, and we know as we look to recruit the best talent in the future, having strong sustainability credentials is going to become increasingly important.

“There is no doubt that for small businesses that are still recovering from the challenges of the pandemic, the idea of making this kind of commitment can be daunting but with the potential savings to be made through behaviour change, the actual cost can be minimal.

“There are a huge amount of small businesses in the UK and their collective power to make a real difference in tackling this huge existential threat of climate change is enormous and so if there are any businesses that would like to find out more about our experience, then we would love to help them take those first steps to becoming carbon neutral and a responsible small business.”