Leadership

Empowering Sustainability Management for Real Growth

October 1, 2021

SINAI

What’s the key to fully integrating sustainability into your firm’s business strategy? How do you set your sustainability department up for success?


Your firm’s sustainability leaders need to be empowered by developing a sustainability strategy aligned with your business model.


You also ensure your team has the right tools for the job. Does your team have access to decarbonization strategy tools like marginal abatement cost curves and internal carbon pricing that every area of your firm一beyond your sustainability department一is aware of and understands their part in reaching and achieving?


Empower your sustainability leaders to progress and integrate sustainability into your company’s critical business decision-making by providing the ability to easily explore vital data and insight that lays the groundwork for effective emissions reductions strategies.


This article outlines what sustainability management means in order to develop and maintain corporate sustainability programs that are truly integrated within the firm’s business objectives and ultimately reduces your impact on the environment. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions management experts at SINAI also define what an abatement cost is and what a marginal abatement cost curve tool can do for your firm when it comes to reducing your carbon footprint.

What is an abatement cost?

An abatement cost refers to the cost corresponding with reducing processes and products that negatively impact the environment, such as pollution. Marginal costs allow one to measure the economic cost of an additional unit.


In other words, a marginal abatement cost calculates the cost of reducing one additional unit of pollution. The MAC curve shows the marginal cost of additional reductions in pollution.

What is a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) Tool?


A MAC curve is an economic tool that firms use to consider various options to reduce the carbon footprint of their process or product. Your firm’s sustainability management experts develop a curve for visual reference by interpreting complex numerical data.

The curve produced shows the cost for various abatement measures, which allows your firm to compare across each. These comparisons assist corporations in making decisions aimed to reduce their carbon emissions in the most effective way possible.


​The MAC curve was developed in the 70s and was initially used to reduce corporations’ crude oil and electricity consumption. Fast forward to the 90s, when the MAC curve was built upon to tackle challenges related to reducing carbon emissions.


Source: McMaster

Like most economic tools, it’s vital to understand the benefits and challenges of your firm using a MAC curve. Carbon reduction opportunities vary by sector and your firm can learn a great deal from what’s already working in the industry you operate in when it comes to refining your own MAC curve.


For example, what’s most effective when it comes to digitalizing decarbonization in the oil and gas industry will differ from efficient net-zero pathways for utility companies.  


Going beyond the MACC curve to achieve real growth

Analyses published earlier this year by McKinsey explain that in order for firms to achieve both deep decarbonization and boost long-term sustainable growth, they should focus on empowering people, pushing beyond a narrow focus on the cost of abatement.


A combination of top-down and bottom-up activities by your firm can look like empowering your staff at all levels to drive emissions reductions while making significant long-term strategic decisions that impact the markets you operate in, the technologies you use, and your firm’s production footprint:



Source: McKinsey

McKinsey goes on to explain that turning emissions-reduction goals into reality involves working towards three key aims at the same time, including:


  1. redefining the deep decarbonization business case using finance
  2. building an integrated sustainability production system into your firm, and;
  3. assembling an infrastructure to support cutting-edge, innovative solutions within your firm’s operations.


A platform that eases deep decarbonization transformation

SINAI has built the world's leading decarbonization platform that helps your firm empower not just your sustainability team, but your value chain and board, as well.


Our next-generation dynamic scenario assessment tools simplify and automate your company’s emissions calculations, easing your deep decarbonization pathway across various areas of your company. We provide your sustainability team with the tools your corporation needs, from automated GHG inventories & baseline projections to automated adaptation modeling and internal carbon pricing.


Trusted by Siemens, ArcelorMittal,  Bayer, and more, we make it easy for your firm to measure, analyze, price, and reduce your corporation’s GHG emissions, keeping your firm on the right track towards achieving your long-term CO2 emissions reductions goals.


Where SINAI differs, when compared to other emissions management products on the market, is our solution allows your firm to create personalized carbon pricing modules in order to consolidate your firm’s environmental impact and make sense out of complicated data. Reach out to us for a demo of our software today and see how SINAI can help your sustainability leaders develop a robust sustainability business strategy, supporting a seamless journey to net-zero emissions.


SINAI Decarbonization Platform

Inventories
Measure, consolidate and report on company impact
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Baselines    
Project future emissions and explore business scenarios
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Low-Carbon Scenarios
Model emissions reduction
opportunities
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Carbon
Pricing
Quantify targets, emissions gaps, prices, & budgets
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Value Chain Management
Work with your
supply chain to decarbonize
products
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