Calculating a carbon footprint: an essential strategy
🎬 Interview with Philippe Mangard, Director of the Global Climate Initiatives platform
Can you introduce yourself and GCI's activity?
Hello, my name is Philippe Mangeard. With a number of friends and partners, we have launched this initiative toidentify and calculate greenhouse gas emissions, so as to establish a carbon footprint, but above all to establish reduction plans that will allow everyone to take their share in the necessary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the climate crisis that is looming before us.
The result today is Global Climate Initiatives. Unquestionable leader in its market, and that's only natural. We started ten years ago.
Three years ago, we were the only digital platform to make this kind of proposal. Today, there are at least half a dozen start-ups that have launched, which shows that the market has evolved and that today we need to move in this digital direction. Let me remind you that the carbon footprint has existed for more than 15 years. For more than 15 years, it has mainly been aimed at very large companies and very large local authorities. Today, the demand from SMEs, VSEs, ETIs and local authorities in general is to be able to appropriate this carbon assessment, to be able to do it alone, in full compliance, in all its complexity, becomes simple thanks to digital tools.
In February 2021, what are the regulatory obligations of companies for their carbon footprint?
Since the Grenelle lawSince the Grenelle Act, which dates back more than ten years, there have been obligations for large companies and local authorities. Fortunately, the State has taken its responsibilities and decided in its finance law 2022, decree of December 2021Fortunately, the State has taken its responsibilities and decided in its decree to require all companies with more than 50 employees which have benefit from an aid plan called COVID, to make their carbon balance compliant.
This means that the state has considered that the ecological transition could not be done without the commitment of all companies, not just the big ones, and this is where we see the perfect relevance of the Global Climate Initiatives offer. It will allow all these entrepreneurs, faced with the constraint of writing a report, to find an easy, autonomous, online solution at a more than competitive price to both, assume this new regulatory obligation, but above all: to engage in this ecological transition and consequently, improve the economic and environmental performance of their company.
What advice do you give to entrepreneurs?
I want to tell entrepreneurs that carbon footprinting should be seen as a new asset for improving business performance.
Today, it is clear that by doing your carbon footprint you are participating in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But for the entrepreneur, the advice I would give him is to do his balance sheet thoroughly: scope 1, scope 2, scope 3, looking line by line at what is happening. He will quickly find extraordinary things: waste, over-consumption, misuse. So, when you do your carbon footprint, you have to do it thoroughly, on these three scopes, look at it in detail, find savings and set up a reduction plan.
