Why understanding your climate impact matters
Whether you're just starting out or scaling rapidly, understanding your climate impact is essential. We know engineering leaders and innovators face competing demands and tough choices on where to focus time and resources.
In the pressure of tight deadlines, limited funding, or rapid growth, sustainability can feel like a ‘nice to have’. But understanding and reducing climate impact isn’t just good for the planet it can also strengthen your business model and unlock new opportunities.
Being able to understand and assess climate impact is crucial:
- Ambition: engineers and innovators are critical in designing and implementing solutions to achieving net zero. A robust climate impact assessment can help refine strategy, enhance wider decarbonisation efforts, and increase commercial value.
- Funding: investors are increasingly considering sustainability in their portfolio, driven by wider environmental, social and governance (ESG) demands and an awareness that sustainable companies will likely outperform others. Articulating this can offer potential competitive advantage in securing investment.
- Credibility: accurate measurement and communication of potential emissions reduction are critical to maintaining transparency and avoiding greenwashing claims.
- Climate risk mitigation: considering climate risks and establishing controls and processes to manage them can enhance business resilience and help prepare companies for future regulatory and environmental challenges.
Engineers are central to tackling climate change
Achieving net zero by 2050 requires a full system transformation and engineers are at the centre of it. From infrastructure to innovation, engineering expertise drives the solutions needed for decarbonisation. To support this, the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub, in partnership with SYSTEMIQ, has developed the Climate Impact Playbook. An impact framework “business model canvas for climate impact assessment" designed to support startups and scaleups assess how their innovations contribute to climate goals.
The playbook is structured around four key pillars with steps to guide users through the journey. Through step-by-step self-assessments around the areas of global challenge, climate solution, sustained impact and externalities, companies can assess and articulate their impact.
How should this resource be used?
While there is not just a one-size-fits-all approach to decarbonisation, there is not a one-size-fits-all to assessing climate impact. Here is a guide on how you can implement the resource in your company:
- Assess who in your organisation should be involved in the process and create a climate impact assessment team and designated authorities
- Designated individual(s) in the company should complete each self-assessment in the playbook
- Develop your tailored pack from the self-assessments
Integrate into your strategy
Whether you’re preparing for fundraising, regular business reviews, research and development or growth strategy, it can help you articulate your climate impact to a wide variety of stakeholders and spot opportunities for growth quite early in your journey.
Flexible application
The best part about this toolkit is its flexibility with implementation. Whether you have one hour or one month, the toolkit is modular in its approach. You can deep dive into one section or complete it fully over a long period of time. You can prioritise one of the four sections in the toolkit based on your stage and what’s most important to your business.
Each startup has a unique team and departments. Based on the use case and functionality this can be owned by one or many individuals:
- Sustainability/Impact/ ESG Leads: They can take full ownership of this playbook and help startups articulate their impact.
- Commercial Leads/Business Development Managers: A handy playbook to map market opportunity and impact of scaling their business.
- CEOs/Founders: As a leader in the business this playbook can help you articulate and contribute a strategic oversight to building climate conscious technologies.
Assign responsibility to ensure actions are tracked, reviewed regularly, and integrated into the company’s ongoing strategy.
- Integrate in organisation wide strategy
Make climate impact playbook a standing agenda item in leadership meetings or quarterly reviews. - Align with reporting and external communications
Use insights derived from using the playbook to strengthen your ESG reporting, investor updates, and customer or social media communications. - Track progress over time
Revisit the toolkit playbook annually to measure improvements, changes to strategy as a result of using the toolkit playbook, updated goals, and ensuring continued alignment with evolving policy, investor expectations, and market trends.
How the Climate Impact Playbook helped Kenoteq enhance their business
Keynoteq is transforming the construction industry by producing bricks from recycled construction waste, significantly lowering emissions compared to traditional bricks. By eliminating virgin cement and high firing temperatures, their solution aligns with the shift toward low-carbon building materials.
Through the Climate Impact Playbook assessment, they identified key climate opportunities that strengthened their competitive edge. As governments tighten regulations to meet Nationally Defined Contribution (NDC) targets and align with global decarbonisation pathways, demand for sustainable materials is rising.
Our assessment highlights how Kenoteq is well-positioned to capture value from these policy shifts while mitigating risks such as potential carbon pricing.
Sam Chapman, CEO and co-founder Keynoteq
Keynoteq bricks made from recycled construction waste
With embodied carbon regulations increasing pressure on the sector, our low-emission bricks provide a scalable, cost-effective solution for the future of construction.
By utilising the Climate Impact Playbook, Kenoteq will have a clear roadmap to maximize climate impact while enhancing business resilience proving that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand.
About ESG and Net Zero and why it matters for your startup
What is ESG?
The Climate Impact Playbook just focusses on the sustainability aspect of companies, but it fits within the wider picture of Environmental, Social and Governmental (ESG) requirements for companies that are increasing in importance.
ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governance, is a framework that evaluates how a company impacts the environment, society, and helps them operate with transparency and accountability. For startups, ESG is not just a trend, it’s a powerful tool to unlock growth, attract investment, and drive climate conscious innovation. As engineers and innovators, you’re at the heart of this transformation.
How does ESG help Startups?
- Attract investors who prioritise environmental impact.
- Strengthen your competitive edge by integrating sustainable practices (like Climate Impact Playbook).
- Future-proof your business and stay ahead of regulatory changes.
What is Net Zero?
Net zero refers to a state in which the total greenhouse emissions going into the atmosphere are equal to those being removed. There is a UK-wide commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, with a Scotland-specific goal to become a net zero economy by 2045.
In seeking to achieve these ambitious targets the UK intends to limit global warming and climate change, which are some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Due to its complexity, reaching net zero by 2050 is a whole system transformation challenge. There are a multitude of touch points, intervention opportunities and solutions that must be activated to achieve this, but engineering expertise lies at the heart, and engineering entrepreneurs and industry play a central role.
Find out more about Academy work on Net zero