With the ACCC and the European Commission clamping down on greenwashing, the conversation surrounding climate action, carbon neutrality, net zero, and offsets has never been more pertinent. Companies must be transparent about their emission reduction efforts and the use of carbon offsets.
This development underlines the importance of transparent, accurate, and competent climate advice – an area where initiatives like Climate Active want to play a pivotal role. Climate Active, an initiative set up by the Australian Government to drive voluntary climate action, has implemented a “Registered Consultant” system and a verification process to support this endeavour. However, concerns exist about these processes, leaving room for potential inaccuracies and misunderstandings.
Under Climate Active’s approach, consultants can achieve “registered” status by answering just a few questions without requiring formal education or training in the field. This low barrier to entry leaves room for consultants to offer advice without a thorough understanding of complex concepts, such as Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) processes.
The lack of understanding around MRV is a particular concern as it has led to instances of incorrect advice being provided, causing potential detriment to clients’ sustainability goals. Furthermore, this registration process can create an aura of implied legitimacy, which should be seriously questioned given the aforementioned issues.
Compounding these issues, Climate Active’s verification framework, specifically the so-called Type 1 verification, permits only the identification of activity data discrepancies, ignoring other shortcomings. Other errors in applying emission factors, inaccuracies in calculating global warming potentials, methodologies and assumptions, and incorrect boundary setting can also significantly impact an organisation’s reported emissions. Yet, the current verification framework doesn’t systematically screen for these errors, often leading to flawed climate action plans.
Getting the detail right
Furthermore, there are some instances where Climate Active references standards in an incorrect context (i.e. ISO 14001 and ISO 14065). It is easy to dismiss incorrectly referenced standards as mere typographical errors or deem them inconsequential. However, given the inherent technical nature of MRV processes, attention to detail is paramount.
Standards serve as the blueprint for methodologies and calculations that underpin these processes. Misapplying them could lead to significant emission reporting errors, compromising the validity and credibility of a company’s sustainability efforts. Therefore, it is not just about getting the standards right; it is about adherence to them, underscoring the precision required in this critical work towards climate action.
These issues combined – the low entry requirements for consultants and the verification process limitations – undermine the industry’s credibility, dilute trust between businesses and their consultants, and, most importantly, impede our collective fight against climate change.
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To rectify this, it is crucial for Climate Active to review its “Registered Consultant” approach by raising the entry requirements, such as requiring formal education or relevant qualifications. It is also important that organisations consider whether the service fees are commensurate with their consultants’ understanding of MRV and other crucial concepts. After all, as the old saying goes – you can either have the lowest price or the best consultant; seldom can you have both.
Time to raise the bar
Regarding the verification process, a more robust framework is necessary to comprehensively address all types of errors and inaccuracies, not just those related to activity data. Also, utmost care must be taken to ensure the accuracy of the standards referenced by Climate Active.
Despite these challenges, it is important to note that Climate Active possesses potential, particularly for small businesses. Climate Active’s mission to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint is laudable. The accessibility and simplicity of the program may not be ideal for organisations with international disclosure requirements, but can be a valuable asset for small businesses seeking to navigate the complexities of climate action.
As a final food for thought, it is crucial to question whether statements like “well, at least we got something” are good enough in these critical times. While it is true that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good, it is also essential to recognise that settling for “good enough” should not impede our progress towards “we can do better.”
To advance towards a more sustainable, carbon neutral or net zero future, we need competent, well-informed consultants guiding businesses and a thorough, accurate verification framework to achieve this.
Climate Active have not released any consultant training since early last year and will not commence training until the end of this year after already pushing back new training multiple times. There is a massive demand for registered consultants that cannot be met. As for the potential for SMEs, they end up paying ~$900-$2500 just to submit and another $2500 for third party verification, plus the consultants fee of another several thousand dollars all before they even purchase and retire any offset credits. They end up paying multitudes more for service facilitation than what gets spent on actually offsetting emissions. Imagine being an SME and finding out you need to spend $10-15k before you even get to the offsetting of emissions, which is what all this is meant to be about, right? And then they buy 60 offset credits for $2000, or opt for even cheaper VCUs because the sustainability budget has already blown out jumping though hoops. Don’t even get me started on how inconvenient it is that CA have chosen to link the BUSINESS climate active account with a staff members MyGov ID for login. What if that staff member leaves? What if they are not a citizen? What if they don’t want what is essentially their social security number linked with their employers activities? We literally have a system for business idenitifer numbers called ABN – but instead choose a individuals MyGov ID to manage this. And then if there are issues, Climate Active defers responsibility as they alledgedly don’t manage the RAM credential manager system. Overall, Climate Active continues to shoot themselves in the foot, reload, and shoot again. No wonder the market is moving rapidly to SBTi and other adjacent systems.
this is very disturbing .. we need more information on these issues. If you Alex or anyone else has more please contact us at editorial@thefifthestate.com.au
I sympathise with Alex’s concerns.
Despite holding a formal qualification in Carbon Management, despite being a Carbon Neutral Certifier under NABERS, I can’t get Climate Active recognition until I have undertaken their training. I understand the reasons why, but they are not presently offering any training. Catch 22?
When I queried this I was told to put my name on a wait list and hopefully something will happen before years end.
My motivation is to assist my company with their carbon neutral certification journey. I know that my company is not alone, and with others queuing up to explore formal net zero certification, a bottleneck like this makes no sense.
As Alex points out, this is probably not good for the Climate Active brand, and it is probably not good for businesses wanting to reduce their carbon footprint.
If Climate Active does not have the resources to offer timely training, perhaps they can turn to existing certifiers to run training on their behalf?
Hi Alex
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read my article.
When it comes to the Climate Active registered consultant training, I feel it falls notably short. This training, despite its proclaimed importance, seems to be designed primarily for form filling, rather than truly educating individuals about the complexities of climate change disclosure. Such a surface-level approach raises serious doubts about the efficacy and reliability of the disclosure that it produces.
Indeed, a key aspect of MRV is a deep understanding of the methodologies, assumptions, and protocols that underpin accurate GHG accounting. Without this understanding, the Climate Active certification process could potentially become a box-ticking exercise (as evidenced by the verification template, for example), undermining the credibility of the entire certification process.
I appreciate your concerns regarding the associated costs of consulting and verification services in the process of attaining Climate Active certification. Allow me to emphasise that (good) consultants devote years of their lives to learning, training, and accumulating the necessary experience to provide top-tier services in their specialised fields, and this does come at a significant cost to them.
As the saying goes, “Quality comes at a price.” Finding a service that is both cheap and of high quality is a rare occurrence, more so in the realm of Climate Active certification. I am observing a rather alarming trend: a race to the bottom, not only in terms of fees but also in quality. This arises from a surge of consultants eager to capture a slice of the rapidly expanding Climate Active certification market, sometimes at the cost of delivering a substandard service.
It is crucial to remember that consultants who have dedicated time, effort, and resources into honing their skills and gaining invaluable field experience often provide a far superior quality of service, even if this comes at a higher price point. The cost of these services should be seen as an investment into the credibility, accuracy, and quality of the Climate Active certification process. As such, I would urge you to consider the long-term value that experienced consultants can bring to your business.