How to decouple from fossil fuels

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to design digital workplaces or “offices in the cloud.” These environments enable companies to allow flexible and remote working for their teams. I also teach the digital literacy, fluency, communication and collaboration skills needed to work in these modern technology-rich workplaces.

You will have seen us make frequent comments about the urgent need for a business to decouple revenue generation from the need to burn fossil fuels. This in the light of looming government action to radically reduce emissions this decade.

I am calling these pending actions Carbon Emission Lockdowns. These will be just as disruptive as the COVID mitigation efforts have been.
So how do you decouple? Let’s use a for-profit event as example.

COUPLED
> Hire a venue (powered by coal electricity)
> Catering (transport to venue powered by petrol/diesel)
> Fly speakers in (powered by aviation fuel)
> Attendees commute to venue (powered by petrol/diesel)

DECOUPLED
> Hire an online venue (Zoom / Teams / Hopin etc.)
> No catering
> No need to fly in speakers
> No need for attendees to commute

How much difference can this make? A recent research paper showed that a 2019 face-to-face astronomy conference contributed 3,000 times more carbon dioxide than the same conference held online this year.

This is how you decouple from the need to burn fossil fuels. Apply this thinking everywhere in your business!

The quicker you do this the less disrupted your business will be.