The power of community in a crisis

OVO’s Kate Weinberg reflects on a hugely momentous year since the energy giant debuted its ground-breaking Plan Zero strategy

Almost one year ago today, OVO propelled Plan Zero. In a direct response to the climate crisis we set about how we would transform our business so that every day, every decision we reached would self-assured any results that meant less carbon.

I would never have imagined that six months later our planet would be fighting another crisis – the Coronavirus. Despite the challenges this presents, I’m really proud of the great progress we’ve made. We’ve succeeded in decoupling our environmental footprint from our business proliferation between 2018 to 2019. We’ve abbreviated our emissions from our operations and our vehicle fleet by 18 per cent of cases per employee and 35 per cent per PS1 of revenue. And we’ve increased our releases per patron by 19 per cent.

Preserve positive in pitch-dark meters

Global commanders, businesses and governments have responded to the pandemic in different ways. But what is most inspiring to me, is how local communities have into action, with neighbours ogling out for each other more than ever before. Despite the pandemic necessitate parties to isolate and are floating free from others; the value of connectedness, a sense of belonging and trust have never been so important. People have really come together to fight this crisis.

Conscious buyers are forming communities to challenge, debate and celebrate when vary happens. The global community has required change to combat the climate crisis, and the world is waking up to the fact it’s now or never.

Creating a zero carbon community

Climate change is a big crisis which has been on the world’s agenda for decades. However, recent events have proved that alter is possible – it has shown the possibility that we can come together and make changes in record time that have a big influence.

This is about creating a mindset shift. Our clients is not only shoppers, the issue is citizens. We believe that people want to get involved, to be part of the solution to the crisis we face – we just need to offer them a stage for modify – a community where we can demonstrate the influence of collective action.

One of the central philosophies of Plan Zero is that individuals have the ability to take action and have real jolt. We believe in the ability of small changes over time because together, those small changes make a difference. These small changes likewise have a ripple effect – men determining small changes adjusted an example for others, where it was also start to take action and that behaviour becomes ordinary. If everyone does their fragment, the whole becomes greater than resources in the amount of its parts.

At OVO, we want to inspire the same sense of community among our members, where citizens with shared values can come together and learn from each other, where they can find a source of hope and connection to fight climate change. That’s why one of our Plan Zero purports is to mobilise a zero carbon community; we’ve committed to help our clients halve their carbon footprint by 2030.

Plan Zero is about heading the way to zero carbon living by creating a community in which all members receive information and coaching, feel inspired by the actions of others, and are given achievable actions to cut carbon. Home energy offsets up 26 per cent of an individual’s carbon footprint, so we’re starting there.

One of our first step was to make it easier for customers to understand their carbon footprint, and track their carbon emissions utilizing the OVO Carbon Tracker, which provides personalised information and revelations to cause action.

We’ve likewise been able to offer our clients a fully zero-carbon heating solution through the Zero Carbon Heating Trial. The inquiry demonstrates how inventive technologies can provide better, low-grade carbon ways of heating homes and show how we can overcome barriers to heat pump deployment, such as running payments, across a range of housing characters. The test is an important step to decarbonising hot and tackling the climate crisis and if successful, well went out on a much larger scale to more dwellings across the country.

And we want to make it as easy as possible for our members to get to net zero, so from October, our OVO Energy members will receive 100 per cent renewable electricity at no extra cost.

Working together to fix our planet

While we don’t have all the answers yet, we do know that communities are a powerful force in a crisis. Looking beyond OVO, I have hope that energy will be one of the sectors that most strongly supports a green recuperation in the post-pandemic era. I hope that we will be able to enable our members to have a positive impact on the world – to make it better than it was before.

Kate Weinberg is Director of Sustainability at OVO.

This article is part of OVO’s partnership with the world’s first Net Zero Festival.

Read more: businessgreen.com