'We believe in the power of influence' - Softcat on 2040 net zero plans

Operations director Al Wynn talks us through Softcat's efforts to pull vendors and other partners with it on its sustainability journey

This interview was carried out as part of CRN's Channel Net Zero Report, which is available exclusively to CRN Essential subscribers

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You set a 2040 net zero supply chain goal last summer. Where are you on your decarbonisation roadmap?

AW: We have three goals. Carbon neutrality, which we did early in 2021. We've tweaked our second target, which was all about renewable energy, to have a bigger ambition to be net zero within scope 1 and 2 by 2024 - delivering on what is within our direct control. Effectively, that's renewables and also car fleet.

And then the big ambition is to have a net zero supply chain by 2040. Having researched what the big vendors are doing, we believe it's achievable. There's an awful lot to do, but we believe in the power of influence. And it will shake up the industry to some degree. Those that don't act upon it and introduce a plan and stay true to that plan will unfortunately be left behind.

In your recent annual report, you summarised what all your vendors are doing around decarbonisation. Why?

AW: We've got a bit of clout in the market, but we can't do this alone. People talk about a race to zero, but it's not really much of a race if you're the only one at the end of the finish line alone. This is a collective journey that we need to go on together. That's why it's important to us to publish and to share and to stay true to what the vendors are doing and how we can help one another listening, learning, comparing notes, to tackle the problem and expedite change.

Why are you now looking to get your 2040 net zero target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative?

We've gone through a lot of work with Support the Goals. But we want that ratified by science

AW: We've gone through a lot of work with Support the Goals. But we want that ratified by science. It's important, to keep us honest and validate the results - I consider it an audit of our thinking and methodology. The pace of it has frustrated me a little, because it's hard to get those sessions in with SBTi. However, this is a bit of a blessing because SBTi was made tougher and more robust following COP26. Before, an organisation could just get a stamp of approval for short-term targets, whereas now there must also be long-term targets, aspiring towards 2040/2050. So we're going through the reinforced, revalidated, tougher measures with SBTi, which puts us at a better endpoint. We hope to be able to have those plans validated within this calendar year.

Scope 3 is the big unknown. What might it encompass for Softcat - and to what extent will it include your vendors?

AW: If you look at us, well over 85 per cent of our emissions will be value-chain related. We are going through steps and measures to quantify that. But there's so much to it. We all take collective responsibility for it. Net zero is not necessarily all about the immediate term, because there are some hurdles that can only be overcome in time. Looking at the ecosystem from a design perspective, from a manufacturing perspective, from a delivery and logistics perspective, we've got a lot of work to do. Just in transit from a factory in China, the difference between shipping a product on a plane versus a boat is a 20 times greater carbon footprint. People aren't necessarily taking that into account when they're procuring that product. We need to get better at promoting that publishing it and making a part of the decision making criteria every step of the way.

What's the biggest challenge facing the industry?

AW: Nobody can solve it alone. It requires harmony and cohesion of an ecosystem as a whole. We cannot deliver on our goals alone. We require everybody to play their part, and all of those pieces of the jigsaw to come together. It's not a single component, and I wouldn't single out the vendor, the distie, the courier, the packaging, or whatever it may be, every single part of it really does matter.

What's been the most challenging aspects so far getting 1 and 2 emissions down? And what advice would you have others that are just embarking on tackling scope 1 and 2?

AW: There are some challenges with landlords in shared office spaces. It's difficult to slice and dice that to get the accurate reporting you need and to carve off your energy fees into renewable sources," he said. "We weren't going to take no for an answer, so we took the decision to put in place our own metres in those locations so we can measure and assess that and then report on it accurately and embark on renewable energy, even if the rest of the building might not necessarily be in a position to do that yet.

The recently introduced Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting requirements have been hailed as a good first step, but do you see the regulatory pressure on companies to decarbonisation growing in the 2020s?

What's next? In my mind, it's the consideration around a carbon tax, which I think will follow

AW: I definitely think it will get more restrictive. This is the start of what's going to follow. SECR is the equivalent of a company needing to submit their financials to Companies House - this is now asking you to do the comparable for carbon and climate reporting. It's great that people are forced to take responsibility and make that publicly accessible information. But at the same time, that's not enough. What's next? In my mind, it's the consideration around a carbon tax, which I think will follow. And although 2040/2050 sounds like a long way out, it's really not. We need people to start to embark on that journey sooner rather than later.

In your annual report, you talk about your own solutions and your own professional services and how they're playing a part in reducing the environmental impact of your customers. To what extent do you see some of those services that you talked - including your assessment service that helps customers calculate emissions across their IT estate - becoming more central to what Softcat and your peers might do over the coming years?

AW: I absolutely do. Some might call me biased because I'm close to the topic. I think it has a key role to play. In the same way that many organisations, many people in our industry, are talking about hybrid working, security, cloud, hybrid infrastructure, whatever the big themes there are, I would say that sustainability opens up any single angle of the IT market. Sustainability has a footprint, across the IT industry as a whole, and is a key link, and a door opener to a conversation that's different to a product or solution. The assessment services are the start of that journey.

Canalys recently argued that vendors should be upping their game on recycling and reuse. Do you agree they could be doing more to recognise and reward partners for selling second-user kit?

AW: My ask is to almost not focus too much on the resale opportunity yet, because there are some challenges to iron out there in terms of the commercial impact on the vendors. The bigger, more critical part to fix is recycling and who's going do it, how it's done, how it's scalable. There are a lot of boutique, niche partners that will deliver elements of it. But for us as an organisation that deals with every single aspect of IT, and potentially wants to make that accessible as an opportunity to customers for any single IT product, we need the breadth from an outbound perspective, to reverse engineer that inbound to recycle products to then make them available for resale.