Purpose Capital
1. What motivated you to begin working with Ekos and what do you aim to achieve?
As impact investors working to drive social and an environmental change, it’s important for us to “walk the talk.” We invest in businesses and projects that are working to mitigate climate change. We need to do our part by minimizing our operational emissions as much as possible.
When it comes to carbon emissions offsetting, Purpose Capital's primary focus is operational emissions reduction. We use offsetting for emissions we can't eliminate, and we recommend this approach to all. We chose Ekos in particular for the quality and integrity of their offsetting projects which we regard to be very important.
2. What have you learnt from working with Ekos on carbon management? Have you seen any benefits? Were there any challenges and how did you overcome them?
It’s been helpful to get a better understanding of where our operational emissions originate.
For example, when we did our first foot printing exercise, it was surprising to see the proportion of emissions that came from our daily commutes. We began busing to work where practical and encouraging carpooling. Half of our employees now drive electric cars too – something that makes a big difference. However, moving to a remote office set-up was our biggest win in this area. This of course has also had a financial benefit for us in terms of cost savings.
3. What changes have made the biggest impact?
Reducing our business-related travel has made the biggest difference. To a degree this relates to business cycles, and some years will necessitate more travel than others. Sill, being aware of the carbon cost of each journey helps us choose the most carbon efficient means to travel and incentivises an overall reduction.
As mentioned above, becoming a remote office organisation has also made a big dent in our emissions – both to emissions from commuting, as well as those related to the premises we were renting. Our scope 2 emissions last year were very low as a result – limited to those allocated to a desk in a purpose-built, shared workspace.
4. What areas have you looked at to make your GHG emissions report more complete? Have you learnt about bettering your data collection?
Over the last few years, we have found several ways to make our scope 3 emissions report more complete, including adding emissions related to our administrative agreement, purchased water, and IT data storage. While we have also begun requesting emissions data from the companies into which we facilitate investments, this remains a work in progress, primarily due to resource constraints. Nonetheless, it’s been encouraging to see the engagement from several of our investee companies.