Enterprise agencies join forces to help businesses be more environmentally competitive
Scottish Enterprise (SE) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) have teamed up to help 50 Scottish companies and 50 Scottish economic development agencies, including ECCI, to help the companies calculate the lifetime carbon savings of their innovative new products and services.
The two-month pilot was aimed at raising the competitiveness of the participating companies in a marketplace where the ability to present accurate data about your environmental impact is increasingly becoming a deciding factor in a company’s overall attractiveness to investors, customers and suppliers.
After a tendering exercise, Impact Forecast was chosen to provide its digital forecasting tool as well as coaching each company on life cycle assessment and producing carbon savings estimates which were then independently validated. The project gave participating companies free access to these services, which would typically require a costly exercise involving private consultants. The programme closed with a workshop on how companies can pitch their carbon story to investors and potential customers.
ECCI was one of 50 Scottish economic development agencies and partner organisations that took part, learning how to assist the participating companies in using the forecasting tool.
ECCI's Carbon Innovation Manager Clare Wharmby worked closely with Spartan Solutions who specialise in Asset Management Software for the Equipment Rental and Oil and Gas, demonstrating how the Impact Forecast software can be adapted to any business product or model.
Feedback from companies highlighted that the programme had improved their knowledge of carbon estimation with participants advising that it will impact their work and competitiveness in future from product development to encouraging investment opportunities.
Clare Wharmby said: "It was really exciting to work with the team at Spartan to understand their business and support them to develop a carbon model for one of their key products.
"Understanding how their product interacted with energy use and carbon emissions and seeing the team be so enthusiastic about how to adapt other products to provide clients with data to monitor, and achieve savings, demonstrated to me the value to Scotland’s business ecosystem of providing tools and support around product footprinting.
"It was also great to see how Impact Forecast could be used across such a wide variety of sectors; enabling a consistent approach to evaluating the carbon impact of businesses."
Alongside the 50 participating companies (10 supported by HIE and 40 by SE), 50 representatives of Scotland’s economic development agencies and partner organisations also took part, learning how to assist companies in using the forecasting tool. This included staff from SE and HIE, South of Scotland Enterprise (SoSE), Zero Waste Scotland, Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI), Censis, The Data Lab, Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) and Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC). The 40 SE-supported companies were funded via the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Climate Partnerships
ECCI works with a broad range of organisations who share our commitment to climate action. Our teams help build and support partnerships between organisations who can deliver real change.