25 October 2024 - This week, the Business Green Net Zero Festival was held in London and attracted more than a thousand leaders, experts and students to hear from speakers addressing the urgent need to meet net zero emissions targets.
Beverley Cornaby, the UK Corporate Leaders Group Director, spoke with Business Green’s Deputy Editor, Michael Holder, during the fireside chat ‘Life in the Fast Lane: Collaborating with UK business to drive climate action, fast’. She discussed what change she has witnessed within the business community regarding their approach to the green agenda since the change in government; what businesses can do to work with government to unlock regulatory barriers, and the need for certainty.
“Policy is going to speed up from now on, and so businesses will need to keep up,” Cornaby said. “It’s really important to move fast – we’re not on target for 2030, which means we are definitely not going to meet 2035 targets as it stands.”
Cornaby drew from recent CISL examples, including the Aviation Impact Accelerator, the Fashion Pact primer on raising ambition for nature within the fashion industry, and its two most recent reports on nature-based decisions within private capital and business models.
The Net Zero Festival also saw CISL Fellow, Munish Datta, discuss the net zero priorities for the new parliament, stating that “This is about global competitiveness. Other economies have taken a lead, so we need to be stronger. We have an opportunity to be a leader.”
“And I haven’t even mentioned climate change or sustainability in that, just competitiveness, because this is so much bigger than that.”