Last Friday morning I facilitated the latest meeting of the Sustainability Leadership Roundtable. The ostensible theme was decarbonising buildings, but, as always, once we dug into the whys and wherefores, we ended up discussing Sustainability fundamentals. And the question from one of the members that has lodged itself in my brain is: “have we been sugarcoating Net Zero?”

And I think the answer is yes. Many UK local authorities who have adopted a Net Zero target went for a 2030 deadline for their entire borough,one none of them will meet. HSBC had to push back its target from 2030 to 2050 as there simply aren’t enough low carbon office buildings available to meet that target. And a recent Sustainability survey from Capgemini (which forms the basis of this Friday’s podcast episode) found the number of organisations admitting they were struggling with Net Zero had risen from 1% to 11% in just a year (I dread to think what the true number is).

My view is that it has been far too easy to sell a ridiculously ambitious target to leaders because they simply don’t understand what it meant in practice. Yes, you don’t want to set the target too far in advance or you won’t get any action, but too soon simply doesn’t leave enough time to change – particularly for an asset intensive business. This is potentially damaging for climate action as leaders who are suddenly confronted with the looming enormity of a Net Zero commitment may decide to bin the whole thing as a bad job rather than recalibrate to a more pragmatic timeframe.

There is a good reason why I insist on getting the board/senior management involved in co-developing Sustainability/Net Zero Strategies. They need to understand what it means for them.