PRESS RELEASE: New One-Stop-Shop for UK Small Business Net Zero Advice

Broadway Initiative • Aug 13, 2023

The Government’s Net Zero Council has announced the creation of a single platform for net zero advice for UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The website is an unprecedented collaboration between UK government, all major business organisations acting under the umbrella of the Broadway Initiative, and the SME Climate Hub.

 Lack of accessible support, tools, and guidance are major barriers often cited as preventing SMEs from beginning their journey to net zero. As part of the Net Zero Council’s commitment to support all UK SMEs with user-centred guidance, the new UK Business Climate Hub website creates one single, easy to find point of information that all net zero champions can signpost to their UK SME members and clients. The Net Zero Council is the Government’s collaboration with finance and business leaders spearheading the green transition.

 

The new UK Business Climate Hub website is the UK partner of the SME Climate Hub, the global initiative founded by the We Mean Business Coalition and the Exponential Roadmap Initiative that empowers SMEs to take climate action. The new platform was developed in partnership with the UK Government and a consortium of business groups, banks and other businesses working through the Broadway Initiative. The UK-specific content for the site was originally developed by experts on business decarbonisation and business associations brought together by the Broadway Initiative in response to a request by the Federation of Small Businesses. 

 

Broadway Initiative Convenor Ed Lockhart said: “UK Business Climate Hub provides a front door for advice for businesses on how to reduce carbon emissions and succeed on the journey to Net Zero. Through collaboration and partnership, we have created a widely accepted single point of information. Now we need to keep on improving the content and promote it widely so as many businesses as possible can benefit.” 

 

Pamela Jouven, Director of the SME Climate Hub said: “Bringing small and medium sized businesses on board to the fight against climate change is essential. However, to facilitate their action, corporations, government, and climate leaders must come together to provide the necessary support and resources for them to embark on their climate journey. By collaborating with the Broadway Initiative, the SME Climate Hub will continue to mobilize businesses in the UK to take climate action and expand the regional resources available for SMEs to build a more resilient future." 

 

Martin McTague, Chair, Federation of Small Businesses, said ““We are pleased to have contributed to the new Business Climate Hub that will provide businesses with trusted tools and information to help them navigate the net zero transition.

 

“SMEs recognise their role in net zero but many still find it challenging to access the relevant support and resources to play their part.  This new official platform for advice and support will really help.

 

“In addition to helping small firms become more energy and resource efficient, the hub also has the opportunity to empower small firms to take ambitious steps towards net zero, ultimately ensuring that they also benefit from the economic opportunities created in a net zero economy.”


NOTES TO EDITORS


  • Traffic from Broadway Initiative’s www.zerocarbonbusiness.uk and SME Climate Hub’s UK landing page www.smeclimatehub.org/uk and www.businessclimatehub.org/uk has been redirected to the Hub’s landing page at www.businessclimatehub.uk 
  • The Broadway Initiative is the coalition of UK trade associations working to 'mainstream' sustainability into the UK economy. Broadway works across the breadth of the business community to understand what is needed to achieve environmental and climate change objectives, then collaborates with UK governments on the frameworks required and develops plans and partnerships in the private sector to implement change.
  • For further enquiries, please contact liam@broadwayinitiative.org.uk or schebil@wmbcoalition.org. 
  • The SME Climate Hub is an initiative of the We Mean Business Coalition, the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, and the United Nations Race to Zero campaign. In collaboration with Normative and the Net Zero team at Oxford University, the SME Climate Hub provides tools and resources to enable SMEs to make a climate commitment, take action and measure their progress towards emissions reductions. This partnership allows SMEs to join the United Nations Race to Zero campaign — an international campaign that brings together an unprecedented coalition of real economy actors and 120 governments committed to achieve net-zero emissions by no later than 2050. 

BT announce their partnership with UK Business Climate Hub

by Broadway Initiative • 22 Apr, 2024
BT marked Earth Day by announcing their partnership with UK Business Climate Hub, the one-stop-shop for UK SME net zero advice managed by Broadway Initiative. BT announced they were joining the UK Business Climate Hub partnership to help small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to take steps to halve emissions by 2030, and pointed their SMB clients to the Hub's ‘Seven Steps to Sustainability’. The UK Business Climate Hub is the UK portal for SME net zero advice, developed with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the international SME Climate Hub and the UK’s main business organisations, energy networks, high street banks and professional bodies. The coalition is managed by the Broadway Initiative and endorsed by the Net Zero Council . Existing members of the coalition include Barclays, British Business Bank, British Chambers of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Electricity North West, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), HSBC UK, Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), Institute of Directors (IoD), Lloyds Bank, Make UK, NatWest, National Grid, Northern Powergrid, and Sage. 

PRESS RELEASE: Nature Market Dialogue arrives to build vital unity and consensus

by Broadway Initiative • 25 Mar, 2024
The Broadway Initiative has launched the Nature Market Dialogue, the space in which stakeholders and influencers can collaborate on the future of UK nature markets. The launch took place on the 25 th March during a roundtable that marked the commencement of the Dialogue’s first workstream, a deep dive into nature market governance. Nature remains in decline. Biodiversity and ecosystem services continue to suffer despite increased public interest and funding, philanthropic efforts and government regulation. Conventional markets have proved incapable of driving investment in the natural capital on which human flourishing and planetary health rely, so nature markets have emerged as a solution. The Nature Market Dialogue is bringing together all the key voices to realise the potential for high integrity nature markets. The Broadway Initiative’s State of UK Nature Markets 2023 built on the work of multiple partners to identify three key challenges: governance, demand drivers and policy continuity. Supported by Esmée Fairburn, the Nature Market Dialogue aims to harmonise and synergise the excellent work being undertaken to crack these barriers and secure agreement on what needs to be done next. The Dialogue will develop a new consensus to respond to the government’s pending consultation on mobilising voluntary green finance and negating greenwash, building the necessary momentum to carry nature markets into the future. The first workstreams are intended to take 18 months to complete, but the Dialogue is here to stay. The Dialogue launched on the 25th March with the initiation of the governance workstream, at a roundtable in partnership with the Environmental Markets Board, Frontier Economics and Arup. Ministers, officials, finance experts and leaders from business and farming gathered to learn both from each other and from the mistakes of the voluntary carbon markets. The roundtable marked the beginning of a process that will surface a consensus among all market participants.  Peter Young, Broadway Chairman and Chair of the Nature Market Dialogue steering committee, said: ‘The Nature Market Dialogue is a vital intervention in the development of high integrity nature markets precisely because it is a dialogue. We are asking everyone with expertise or opinions to head to the project website https://www.naturemarketsdialogue.uk/participation to register their desire to participate. Only by building true, broad consensus and working in a co-ordinated way will we be able to unleash the potential of nature markets to reverse the biodiversity crisis.’ Annabelle Ong, a Director at Frontier Economics, said: ‘Frontier Economics is delighted to host the first Roundtable of “The Nature Market Dialogue”. We urgently need to find ways to accelerate nature recovery and Nature Markets can play an important role in facilitating private investment in nature recovery. I am looking forward to bringing together stakeholders from a wide range of sectors to discuss how we can avoid the pitfalls of voluntary carbon markets and create high integrity nature markets that deliver for the environment and society.’
The State of UK Nature Markets 2023 Cover

PRESS RELEASE: New report finds interest in UK nature markets still high, but more rapid progress needed to ensure impact and integrity

by Broadway Initiative • 30 Oct, 2023
The Broadway Initiative has released a review of the progress towards establishing high integrity markets for nature across the UK.
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