Adding new tech to green compliance will take it to the next level
Kenn Milton’s speech on the event “Digitalization and Green Compliance. Two Sustainable Growth Strategies for Many Companies”, in Søhuset on June 9th, 2021
“One of MyBlueLabel Compliance Services’ missions is to introduce new tech into the compliance area. We have recently taken the initiative to develop solutions that make compliance with soft law easier, i.e. when companies themselves commit to certain goals, like green compliance. While Paris Agreement legally binds countries to limit global warming, in 2018 some leading companies signed up for an initiative called Business Ambition for 1,5 C. The aim was to demonstrate they believe in science and the advice given by scientists and to set a trend hopefully other companies will follow.
This is a good example of soft law and today 1400 companies have signed the initiative. Green compliance as soft law has a multiplicator effect. When the larger companies signing up for the initiative, they demand green compliance from their suppliers that again demand that from theirs, with a triple or quadruple effect on the industries.
The companies who have signed for the initiative, also agree to track and communicate their target progress annually. Some companies develop their own IT solutions, like Chr. Hansen, others look for compliance services for help. Compliance solutions that both track and document green compliance, while helping you take care of business-critical tasks, are becoming increasingly demanded. Let me give you an example.
Companies looking for how to cut emissions, often consider changes in transport solutions, which in 2010 stood for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuels burned for road, rail, air, and marine transportation. 95% of the world’s transportation energy still comes from petroleum-based fuels, largely gasoline and diesel, we need to investigate ways how to introduce electric vehicle types.
If we put blockchain into this solution that makes it possible to monitor, track and document the green compliance and therefore tell the changes in a company’s CO2 footprint, it gives us a powerful tool of soft law, something that is not regulated or controlled centrally by states but is instead managed by large companies that wish to set higher standards together with their suppliers.
The first thing that suppliers and companies can do themselves is to go in and look at the types of vehicles they have, their age, their fuel type, vehicle loads, the driving times, number of employees, how often they drive, and on which vehicles. The system aggregates this data telling us the CO2 footprint of the company within transportation. The situation is not perfect but now the company can plan the next steps based on data, in the next couple of years they can switch some of their fossil fuel vehicles to something more sustainable, which reduces the CO2 footprint. Furthermore, the system will track and document the progress, which can be communicated. Communicating efforts is critical to maintaining good standing with stakeholders that is valuing soft law principles and reliable data.
If we add AI and blockchain to the system, we can start to gather and analyze data. Furthermore, tweaking the algorithms can lead the business development work closer to 0 carbon emission. The moral is that you don’t need to be perfect from the start, but you need at least to do something. Also, with all the data available in the solution, you can compare industries, and compare emission types. With all the data available this way, you start recommending ways to reduce emissions and improve green compliance, motivating and inspiring companies to take on the journey towards a carbon zero framework.
Too many resources are today used at looking at data sources, finding out what requirements have changed and what this means for the company. The new tech solution will be continuous, automatic monitoring of data changes and regulations updates. The new solution would go in and read these documents to find out what is the difference in these documents we will extract the knowledge and break it down into a requirements matrix and this will give a lot of freedom a lot of resources to organizations to plan after.
And if we can build a solution where you visually display these changes, it will make it even easier for people on a business executive level.
With a background in hard law regulatory compliance, MyBlueLabel Compliance Services makes sense of regulations by combining IT-system, knowledge, and passionate people. We make sure that our clients are on top of every single regulation while taking green compliance up to the next level- where it should be.”