Refine your decarbonisation roadmap with the Net Zero Navigator

In almost all industries, the pursuit of Net Zero has become a priority. A combination of new legislation and societal and reputational pressures has pushed decarbonisation to the very top of board-level agendas. 

However, the route to Net Zero is seldom a straight line. Instead, there are various, winding paths you can take, and deciphering which is best for your financial and emissions targets can be a challenge. 

There are many questions to ask: You need to know how much CO₂ you’re emitting, where opportunities for reduction lie, which approaches are best suited to your existing environment and future plans, and how to secure permitting and stakeholder buy-in. 

This is a landscape our consultants understand well. We constantly apply our 140 years of engineering experience to help organisations answer these questions and explore various approaches. 

Now, we’re augmenting that experience with a new tool that helps us assess solutions quickly and easily – so we can help you choose the best course of action. 

The vast majority of industrial CO₂ emissions are produced by the energy that the industry consumes. To help you decarbonise, we put our focus therefore on your energy consumption. We find suitable solutions that help reduce your energy usage or replace your energy sources with clean power, thereby reducing your CO2 emissions.

Introducing the Net Zero Navigator

The Net Zero Navigator combines data from energy use on your sites with relevant external factors to help us select the right decarbonisation approach for you.

The tool standardises many of the repetitive tasks that contribute to a decarbonisation strategy. This gives our consultants more time and freedom to implement their years of decarbonisation experience – and help you define a robust and data-driven roadmap for emissions reduction.

Our experts will use the Net Zero Navigator in our consultancy sessions with your teams. We collect data from your sites (e.g. current energy usage) and define the playing field for decarbonisation (e.g. what size electricity grid connection is available? Or gas grid?). and showing the outputs through a single, dynamic dashboard. The visualisations from this dashboard will help you clearly see the projected results from different approaches.

With essential financial and carbon reduction information for each approach, you’re able to simulate different combinations of decarbonisation measures, and pick the right actions at the right time based on elements like CO₂ reduction and costs.

The end result is a comprehensive, detailed and stress-tested roadmap that you can use to kick-start your decarbonisation journey. 

What this means for you

The Net Zero Navigator is designed to remove uncertainty, helping you to find the best path towards Net Zero more quickly. In feasibility stage there is lots of uncertainty. We could reduce the uncertainty though.

By identifying how your current environment contributes to your emissions, and finding the best approaches to mitigating this – based on your own specific requirements and budgets – you can avoid wasted effort and investment. And you can gain peace of mind that you’re on the right route.

The tool will help our consultants guide you in answering important questions like:

• How do we decide which approach works best for us?
• How can we convince management to act?
• How do we report our sustainability efforts transparently to showcase our commitment and progress?
• How much CO₂ are we emitting and where can we achieve reduction?
• How does my environment promote or hinder my transition? 
• What are the best investments for us and their likely returns – and how can we use that information to guide our roadmap?
• How do we ensure that our roadmap and measures comply with local and international environmental regulations? 

With answers to these questions, you can create a blueprint for unlocking a range of benefits, like simplifying compliance, reducing costs, and increasing the energy efficiency of your built environment.

The Net Zero Navigator in action

At Haskoning we have many years of experience supporting clients with their decarbonisation roadmaps. However, one recent project with an [INDUSTRY] client marked a significant milestone as the first time we used the Net Zero Navigator to help guide decision making. 

After our consultants had already identified the decarbonisation measures most suited to our clients, they used the tool to group these measures into an actionable roadmap, which gave them the ability to compare different approaches considering energy usage, CO₂ emissions and costs over time. 

We used the tool to develop a detailed analysis of three separate pathways: a “business as usual” approach, a “preferred route”, and an “alternative route”. 

Our client was confident in the roadmaps we developed in collaboration with them, each of which was supported by robust data, and noted that the Net Zero Navigator played a pivotal role in shaping its strategy going forward. 

The Net Zero Navigator is still in its early stages of development, but it’s already proving its value in client engagements and we are actively working to expand its capabilities and improve its functionality.