The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 by 196 countries, brought urgency to the climate crisis on a global scale and outlined the vital mission to limit the Earth’s temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels to prompt action across the world. Three years later, the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and backed by 6,000+ climate scientists, lowered the limit to 1.5°C in an effort to avoid the detrimental and irrevocable effects of climate change.
Governments, countries, cities, and companies, big and small, are adapting their strategies and daily operations to meet new carbon-neutral expectations. On September 21st, 2020, the Climate Clock in Manhattan’s Union Square, created by artists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, shocked the world with the reveal of our shorter-than-expected 7 years and 101 days until Earth’s carbon budget is fully depleted, assuming the world’s current emission rate. Keeping global emissions above zero is simply no longer an option if we want to prevent the irreversible depletion of our carbon budget.
Drastic results require drastic action – the time to act is now. BrainBox AI recognizes that climate change poses a threat to the economy, nature and society-at-large. With a corporate vision to save the planet and sustainability being at the heart of our culture and operations, today we announce our commitment to:
In doing so, we are proud to be recognised by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, and to join the SME Climate Hub alongside governments, businesses, cities, regions, and universities around the world with the same mission. By fast-tracking our commitment to reach net-zero 2 decades early, BrainBox AI is also closely aligned with the B Corp Climate Collective comprised of companies that have made the commitment to reach net-zero by 2030.
Our decision to do so stems from the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming study, which found with high confidence that “limiting warming to 1.5°C depends on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the next decades, where lower GHG emissions in 2030 lead to a higher chance of keeping peak warming to 1.5°C” (page 95). In accordance with our SME Climate Commitment, BrainBox AI is dedicated to making sustainability a driving force in three main areas: 1) throughout our value chain, 2) across our internal operations and activities, and 3) through the delivery of our avoided emissions solution.
As leaders in climatech, we seek to partner with firms throughout our value chain that are aligned with our values and are actively pursuing ways to run their businesses more sustainably. For example, with our technology being cloud-based, we consciously selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as our cloud platform, given the company’s pledge to achieve 100% renewable energy usage by 2025 for their global infrastructure.
Internally, our team is continuously reminded to have an environmentally cautious mind, whether it comes to larger activities like business travel or smaller actions like exclusively using reusable items in our office. Across the organization, we are committed to significantly reducing our scope 3 emissions by limiting employee business travel to necessary situations only. Through our project delivery, we will continue to promote virtual site visits and installations, and paper-free promotion and communication. Given the nature of our technology and the resilience and adaptability BrainBox AI has shown over the past year, we are confident in our ability to continue delivering value while always keeping the environment in mind.
Our objective to stay within the Global Warming of 1.5°C limit is only possible with global cooperation, meaning that all entities, regardless of size, must do their part. For this reason, one of our biggest goals is to empower real estate organizations around the world with our avoided emissions solution that generates 20-40% reductions in commercial building’s carbon footprints. We strongly believe in creating holistic sustainability strategies and we highly encourage our clients to leverage their BrainBox AI generated energy cost savings to further accelerate other complimentary sustainability projects.
BrainBox AI’s commitment to the SME Climate Hub marks a milestone in our corporate journey and we are excited to continuously improve our sustainable initiatives over the next decade to help us achieve our goal of reaching net-zero by 2030. We recognize that there is still significant work to be done, and we look forward to sharing our yearly progress.