Our impact on the environment

Paradigm Norton become a certified B Corporation

What is our Carbon Footprint and how can we reduce it?

Climate Change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. We are committed to doing all we can to respond to this challenge.

Whilst it is straightforward to measure the carbon emissions we directly cause, it becomes more complex to estimate our indirect emissions (as global standards require), such as commuting, our purchases of goods and services, or the carbon emissions associated with investments.

Our estimate is that our total annual emissions during 2019-20 were equivalent to 265 tonnes of CO2. This is a best estimate. The calculation includes our most carbon intensive activities but does not exhaustively include the impact of all of our expenditure. We plan to do further work to produce more detailed estimates.

Reaching Net Zero Carbon

Understanding our carbon footprint is a key step in being able to make reductions and offset what we haven’t been able to prevent.

Paradigm Norton is committed to working towards reaching Net Zero Carbon as quickly as possible and before 2030. We are developing a plan in order to become Net Zero.

We are accelerating the reduction of our emissions. This year we have made some of the easiest changes, such as ensuring that our offices are powered by renewable energy.

We’ve also introduced clean commute incentives to encourage our partners to embrace new, cleaner ways of getting to work, launching a salary sacrifice scheme to assist our partners to acquire an electric vehicle, and adding electric bikes to our Cycle to Work scheme.

Investments

Emissions from corporations represent a large proportion of global emissions, placing a responsibility on these organisations to act and innovate in order to become aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement goals.

We believe that the financial services sector has an important role to play in influencing corporations to play their part in reducing carbon emissions and tackling climate change. We are excited to be part of the emerging movement of investors engaged with climate issues.

As part owners of corporations, investors hold responsibility for a share of their emissions. Our initial estimate is that the indirect emissions associated with our clients’ investments may be 1000 times greater than our direct emissions.

Clearly this deserves much more attention. There are complex calculations involved in estimating the carbon emissions of an investment portfolio. We aim to find simple and clear ways to summarise this that enable our clients to make informed investment choices.

Our first Carbon Footprint estimate (2019–2020 Financial year)

Find out more

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Read our Impact Report HERE

This article is distributed for educational purposes and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product.