Pic: design master, istockphoto

As the decarbonisation of the UK electricity grid continues apace, the new Government GHG conversion factor for a unit of electricity has fallen by a whopping 26% compared to the 2025 figure. This means your carbon footprint will have shrunk considerably – not just your Scope 2 emissions, but also the contribution that your UK suppliers’ Scope 2 emissions make to your Scope 3 emissions. As electrification continues to penetrate the economy, that benefit will progressively permeate further into your current Scope 1 and 3 emissions.

This is obviously great news, except for one large potential pitfall. I recall sitting and listened to the leader of a large organisation boast about substantial progress on carbon reduction. A quick back of a fag packet calculation indicated that at least 90% of that ‘progress’ was due to the reduction in grid carbon intensity. In other words he was taking credit for the hard work and cash investment of others, while he sat on his hands and did very little.

This is a bit of a conundrum – and one some of my clients struggle with. We should take credit for switching from fossil fuel powered assets (ICE vehicles, gas boilers etc) to electricity (EVs, heat pumps etc) to take advantage of grid decarbonisation, but without falling into the ‘look, no hands’ trap. But where do you draw the line? If you, say, buy a few electric vans, do you count the subsequent carbon benefits from grid decarbonisation at the risk that managers just see the line going in the right direction and think they don’t have to bother replacing the rest of the fleet?

To me, this shows the importance of setting, and keeping focus on, stretch targets. Incremental targets encourage an obsession with incremental trends (“will we hit this year’s target?”); stretch targets encourage more radical thinking (“how will we meet our 2040 target?”). We need to keep our eyes and those of decision makers on the big picture and disabuse them if they stray into the Scope 2 trap.