Logicalis to aim for carbon neutral scope three emissions by 2040

Scope three emissions refers to emissions not produced by a company itself, but by those that it's indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain

British MSP Logicalis is planning to reach carbon neutrality including scope three emissions by 2040, Group CEO Bob Bailkoski said in an interview with CRN.

Scope 3 emissions are those not produced by the company itself, and not the result of activities from assets owned or controlled by them, but by those that it's indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain.

Earlier last year, Bailkoski spoke to CRN about their targets for scope one and two to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025.

"We've now got a handle on what our scope three emissions are specifically," he explained.

"And that data has been input to a broader ESG tracking platform, so now, we now have a comprehensive picture of what our entire suite of emissions is.

"And as a consequence of that, we've held some workshops around the group to ascertain ways in which we can reduce that scope three and continue with our pledge on scope one and scope two missions to get to carbon neutral by 2025 on scope one and scope two."

Bailkoski said Logicalis recently signed up for the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a group of leading companies around the world committed to the corporate net zero standard - a framework for corporate net zero targets, set in line with climate science.

"It's a very science-based, as the name suggests, approach which doesn't let you sign up to impossible targets overall," he said.

He explained that the bulk of Logicalis' scope three emissions comes from the supply chain and are covered by actions that vendors are taking.

"So, we're working with them to keep them honest, make sure that they're held accountable.

"But there are other areas that we can focus on that make a difference to our scope three emissions.

"For example, travel is a scope three emission.

"So, we're introducing electric vehicle policies. In a in an evolving way around the Logicalis footprint around the world.

"We're looking at things like a sustainable travel policy, which we've actually just introduced."

He added that Logicalis is working with a third party's platform called Route Zero.

"When you're making travel choices, they help you choose the most sustainable from an emissions perspective - what's most sustainable choice overall so can you get to Barcelona easily using the train?

"And if so, what will the emissions be on that journey versus flying there or versus driving that whatever the other options are?

He added that next next fiscal year for Logicalis, the company will start introducing carbon budgets for travel as well, which "will make people accountable for this".

Update on scope one and two

Since CRN last spoke to Logicalis, Bailkoski said the company has made significant progress on their scope one and two emission targets.

"Every region has started its journey towards renewable energy. We are very confident that we'll get all of the controllable emissions within the scope one and scope down to zero but there are certain elements there that we will always have some carbon footprint.

"And we recognise that and that's why our commitment has to be carbon neutral, rather than zero, which indicates that we'll have some offsets associated with that."

He said the company is looking to engage with organisations that provide ethical carbon offset programmes.

Reprogramming sales

Bailkoski also discussed the importance re-adjusting the way sales teams work for a more sustainable business environment.

"I think it's an industry wide issue. If you think about the way that the entire channel has been programmed from vendors right through to the channel partners, and to a certain extent, customers, we all work on a refresh cycle.

"It was our policy is to refresh certain devices after a certain period of time, commission payments have been made to salespeople on the basis of selling new.

"Well, in the world of sustainability, replacing old for brand new isn't always the right answer."

He explained that Logicalis looks at customers in a holistic sense, trying to give them the right advice from a sustainability point of view, as well as their business needs.

This means perhaps considering remanufacturing devices, instead of brand new. Or looking at extending the lifecycle of devices.

Finally, Bailkoski discussed how in the effort of achieving carbon neutrality the company is pushing for collaboration across the channel, and to do so it's sharing data and insights about its carbon footprint with customers and partners.

"We've also now begun to offer our customers with the same access to the same data, we can now provide our customers with some telemetry some data insights on their carbon footprint.

"And giving them that information completely for free helps them understand what their carbon footprint is today, on those environments and then also helps them take actions to reduce that carbon footprint.

"But the first thing is knowledge is power.

"And giving our customers that knowledge for free, I think is a really strong sign of Logicalis' commitment to our sustainability journey."