Net Zero | Greenwashing
Intention vs accident
As efforts to tackle climate breakdown grow among civil engineering firms, so does the risk of unintentional greenwashing. Tom Pashby reports.
Public outcry over inaction by industries and states to address climate breakdown, along with the UK Government setting a decarbonisation target of 2050, have led to civil engineering firms pursuing a range of environmental policies.
Organisations in the UK have in recent years started to play their part in tackling the climate emergency. For many, this has entailed accelerated efforts to work out the best pathways to decarbonisation.
Liebherr LR1250E electric crane at HS2’s Old Oak Common construction site Photo Credit: HS2 Ltd
That scramble to respond and the lack of consensus or guidance on how to achieve it, meant it was difficult to judge how ambitious to be as an organisation, when trying to balance being seen to ‘do something’, with the practicalities of untested implementation. Expert commentators point to some problematic consequences of the rush to decarbonise.
Greenwashing is now a widely recognised issue. More importantly, it is no longer seen as linked solely to “bad actors” manipulating their brand image without genuinely working to improve their organisations’ relationship with nature. Unintended greenwashing is a growing challenge.
WHAT IS GREENWASHING?
The term ‘greenwashing’ has been in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 2002, where it is defined as “the creation or propagation of an unfounded or misleading environmentalist image”.
The earliest formal reference to greenwashing, according to the OED, was in 1987 where US publication Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee, included the line “it requires more than cosmetic greenwashing to be truly concerned with the environment”.
Since then, businesses’ engagement with environmental issues, and their struggles to get to grips with genuine environmental impact, have added complications to the idea of greenwashing.
Mace global head of responsible business James Low says there are two parts to greenwashing.
He says one is “people blatantly, falsely advertising a product or a business’s [green] credentials.
“You see examples of it all the time, people advertising a product that’s got green packaging and leaves and all these credentials on it. But it’s actually not that sustainable, and it’s either clever accounting or false advertising.”
The other area is “accidental or unintentional misinformation.”
“I think what we’ve got to be careful about in terms of greenwashing is that some are doing it on purpose, but a lot are still figuring out what is a fast-changing, complex area.”
COMPLEXITY AND CONTEXT
The Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) head of climate action Will Arnold agrees with Low on the two distinct types of greenwashing.
Arnold says: “It’s really important to differentiate between intentional greenwashing and accidental greenwashing, because people are often getting into hot water for being well-intentioned and thinking they’re doing the right thing.
“I suspect that most incidences of it are unintentional, and when people find out what they’ve said erroneously, they are devastated and want to do something about it as quickly as they can.”
He notes that the driver of people accidentally greenwashing in civil engineering is due to the complexity of the issue, and how commitments like net zero or zero carbon impact the climate in different ways.
“This is a form of unintentional greenwashing, greenwashing that comes from not understanding that complexity,” says Arnold.
“Or worse, if somebody does understand that particular thing, and they go ahead and do it anyway and sing their own praises, then I’d argue that that is deliberate greenwashing.”
Skanska Costain Strabag joint venture sustainability and carbon lead Athina Papakosta agrees with Arnold that good intentions can still inadvertently lead to greenwashing and compromise environmental performance.
She provides examples of activities which can look environmentally friendly at first glance but may have unintended consequences if not put into context. One example is the use of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO).
HVO is a secondary biofuel made primarily from Used Cooking Oil (UCO) that can be used as a substitute for diesel in construction equipment and vehicles.
Papakosta says “a zoomed-in vision only considering the carbon footprint per litre may conclude that HVO is generally preferable over electric solutions from the sustainability perspective. This is because the carbon figures for HVO make use of the carbon neutrality convention and therefore may turn out lower than the impacts from using electric equipment on mains grid electricity.
“However, a different story emerges when looking at the wider industry decarbonisation picture”, she notes. “A range of additional factors need to be considered including HVO having to be sustainably sourced – something that is by nature very hard to verify, as it is a secondary product made from waste that it is hard to track back – and has limited availability, as it is driven by cooking oil demand.
“Electric equipment, on the other hand, is emissions-free, approximately twice as efficient as traditional diesel engines, and can run on clean power. It is therefore the preferable option where possible, whilst at the same time, sustainable biofuel solutions such as HVO are indeed great interim solutions to pick for machinery that is hard to electrify. But all this only becomes apparent when taking a more comprehensive approach.”
She goes on to say that transparency and a holistic, in-depth understanding of the available solutions are necessary “to enable truly sustainable decisions, rather than jumping straight into anything ‘low carbon’ or ‘green’, before properly assessing its actual environmental value in the grand scheme of things.
“The interest in exploring all things low carbon should by all means remain; yet the interrogation of low carbon options should be strengthened to underpin more robust decision-making.”
She mentions that “one might rightfully argue that ‘The carbon numbers will tell you the truth’ but they don’t necessarily uncover the whole picture when looked at in isolation.”
“When we’re dealing with a problem as global and chronic as climate change, we need to take into account what benefits the bigger picture,” Papakosta continues.
Low says he is not aware of intentional greenwashing in the civil engineering sector but says he “would not be surprised” if there was “some unintentional greenwashing”.
“Three or four years ago, everyone made this dash to say they were a net zero carbon business. At the time, it was the right thing to do. Part of that was ‘Let’s buy carbon offsets.’ It was all legitimate and verified.
“Over the past few years, the language has changed and has become ‘You can’t call yourself net zero carbon, you’ve got to call yourself carbon neutral. Are you zero carbon or net zero carbon?’”
Low cites carbon offsets as one example of practices that emerged during a period where definitions of environmentally sustainable businesses were still being worked out. Over time, the credibility of carbon offsetting has been brought into question; over-reliance on it - without engaging in other carbon reduction measures - risks becoming a form of greenwashing.
“I don’t think anyone was doing it intentionally. But as we learn more, I guess we figure out more things we didn’t know before,” he says.
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
The calls for urgent climate action were so well-heeded by some organisations that they promised more than was practical within the timeframes proposed.
In November, management consultant Bain & Company’s advisory partner, and former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy director general for energy transformation and clean growth, Julian Critchlow told NCE that nearterm targets can make businesses act “less sensibly”.
He said: “If you have a medium- or long-term plan, then you can put into place the cheaper things up front and phase them in over time. Getting the timing right is the correct strategy. The broader and more integrated the strategy, the lower the cost will be overall to deliver the same result.”
Papakosta says that although strides have been made over the past decade or so, businesses are still not taking sustainability seriously enough. Often ambitions only stretch to reporting and target setting, while decisive action to materialise those targets lags behind.
Papakosta emphasises that she would rather see companies set realistic expectations instead of making ambitious claims to raise their profile but failing to deliver.
CARBON ACCOUNTING
Frameworks and procedures from accountancy have been widely adopted as mechanisms for pursuing climate action within organisations.
The relatively new practice of carbon accounting is one area in which reporting risks overriding delivery.
Papakosta says that “in some cases sustainability has become a synonym for reporting” where stock taking on sustainability seems to get all the attention, as if it were completing the environmental sustainability journey, whilst this is a necessary step, it is only the start.
“Much like doing accounts and compiling balance sheets does not make a business profitable - rather it’s strategies and actions that generate the value that brings profit - sustainability is the same. It’s the decisions and solutions that will be implemented that will drive the environmental sustainability performance.”
Carbon credits or offsets are a big part of the carbon accounting picture, enabling organisations to plug gaps in their journeys to net zero, especially in areas which are hard or impossible to decarbonise across all production and consumption areas.
Low says: “On the legitimacy of the credits, there was a huge exposé last year that they’re not all doing what they said they were. Some are double counted, double sold. Some never actually deliver the level they should be.
“People were buying what they thought were legitimate, third party, independently verified [carbon credits], doing all the things they thought right, asking all the necessary questions. And it turns out they weren’t [legitimate].”
Low is referring in part to a Guardian investigation published in January 2023 which found that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by the world’s leading certifier Verra were likely to be phantom credits and did not equate to genuine carbon reductions.
Electric equipment is emissions-free, approximately twice as efficient as traditional diesel engines and can run on clean power
Low continues: “The risk with carbon capture in the future, is that there’s another carbon offset issue waiting to happen, because it’s such a hard thing to measure?
“It’s a whole minefield in carbon offsetting, of what’s legitimate and acceptable or not. The physics is you emit carbon, it’s in the atmosphere, stopping deforestation doesn’t absorb it back in. It’s released.”
He points out that while technologies around carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) are designed to take carbon out of the atmosphere, their effectiveness has yet to be proven.
“But no one’s got consensus on what the right answer is. It’s hard to say people are greenwashing if there’s no industry-agreed consensus on what the right answer looks like. This is why there’s that unintentional risk of greenwashing, because we’re all doing what we think is right in a world where we’re still trying to figure out the science behind it.”
Commenting on whether carbon accounting is part of the solution or more of a problem Arnold says: “I think it’s part of the solution. It’s not perfect, but nothing in design ever is.
“Everything’s a simplification of reality in this job. And I think that’s as true for carbon accounting as it is for seismic design or fire safety for example.
“You have to simplify it to an appropriate level so you can then use it as part of your design, but it’s a very useful tool and it continues to improve.”
EDUCATION
IStructE holds an annual climate emergency conference and the 2024 edition focused on ‘Navigating sustainability in practice and cutting through the greenwash.’ The keynote presentation was by Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership interim CEO Linday Hooper.
Arnold says he asked Hooper to speak about greenwashing because: “If we don’t speak about it, we won’t learn from it, and things won’t change, particularly where it’s unintentional. I think people would very much like to learn from this.”
Arnold reflects on whether unintentional greenwashing comes from organisations making overambitious pledges, or if it is a case of decision-makers’ poor climate literacy.
He says: “Those are related problems. If you are overly ambitious or unachievably ambitious, it’s probably because you don’t understand the subject area well enough.”
He sees two reasons why unintentional greenwashing occurs. The first is “a lack of understanding, and that can lead to somebody saying ‘We’re going to be net zero by 2026’, because they don’t understand what that really means. They don’t understand how hard that would be to do within today’s economic systems.
“The other area that comes up more frequently these days comes from the complexity around emissions” and the topic of sustainability in general, Arnold says.
“We’re operating in a world that’s putting sustainability on an ever-increasing level of importance, and it will only continue to go in that direction. It needs to also become the norm that you wouldn’t get into senior leadership without understanding the sustainability accounting implications of what you’re doing,” says Arnold.
“There’s huge room for people at the top of firms to upskill, at least in the basics. At least for them to start asking ‘What is it we don’t know?’ and be cautious before making claims about how what they’ve achieved within their firms or within their work.”
PREVENTION
Efforts to prevent greenwashing can only start from a position of genuinely wanting to pursue climate action. And for people and organisations that do want to improve environmental outcomes, the experts NCE spoke to provided some advice.
Low says: “There’s great guidance out there. A lot of people must do TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) assessments, and that will give you a good framework and guidance on how to assess your business, so you can understand how you’re exposed, good and bad.
“We use the language of, ‘How do you remain credible throughout all this change coming around you?’
“And it just comes back to things like ‘How do you embed climate risk into your enterprise risk process? How is every aspect of your business impacted positively and negatively by climate change and climate-related impacts?’
Reflecting on what the civil engineering sector should do to stop greenwashing, Arnold makes three recommendations.
He says the first is about verification: “If you think you’ve done something great, get it checked by another party, whether it’s another firm or a different sustainability consultant to the one who gave you the advice originally, do some sort of sense checking before you make that claim.”
The second is transparency. “If you’re saying that this is net zero because of whatever you’ve done, publish the data,” Arnold says, highlighting that it could be anonymised to protect commercial confidentiality.
He explains that if people are acting with good intentions and publish their data, and it later turns out they were wrong, the data should show why they came to the original conclusion.
The last recommendation is for firms in civil engineering to become more vocal advocates. He says: “If you see something that seems at all dubious, whether it’s in your firm or a firm that your friend works at, call it out, whether it’s in private or in public. Be part of that group of us who are trying to change this.”