How to Make a Climate Action Plan in 4 Steps

TL;DR

• ‍The 4 step approach to create your business's climate action plan:
  
  • Learn about the fundamentals of sustainability and how your climate impact fits in so you and your team understands your goals and their purpose;
  • Calculate your carbon footprint and identify where your emissions are coming from; 
  • Create your strategies based on your emissions scopes;
  • Prepare for future changes.
• How understanding your carbon impact helps you make changes today and in the future. 
• How to position your business well for B Corp certification, public sector tenders and corporate supply chain due diligence.

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Have you been facing any of the following issues?

• Losing contracts to more sustainable competitors
• Trouble hiring and retaining skilled employees
• Rising costs and falling margins

A climate action plan can help. 

Businesses without an environment strategy can struggle to recruit and retain employees. According to a 2025 study by Deloitte, 70% of Gen Z and millennials consider a company’s environmental credentials or policies to be important when evaluating a potential employer.

Further, with legislation now mandating stricter transparency for supply chains in many industries, a climate action plan can provide a competitive advantage and resilience in the face of future legislation and changes to the market and climate.  

According to a 2024 report by NYU, sustainable consumer goods are growing at 9.9% CAGR, driving one-third of consumer goods growth despite being only 18.5% of the current market. (Source: Sustainable Market Share Index) 

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Climate action plans and energy efficiency

Climate action plans can improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. For example, a traditional gas boiler is less than 100% efficient, meaning you get less than one unit of heat out for every unit of gas you put in. A modern air source heat pump, by contrast, gives you three to five units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed. That’s an efficiency of 300–500%, powered by an increasingly clean UK electricity grid.

If your office switches from electric heating with a demand of 18,000kWh to even low-efficiency air-source heat pumps, you could recoup the cost of heat pump installation in about five years, and then save £1,080 per year after that (Source: Carbon Trust). For businesses with high energy usage, the initial investment in solar panels can be recouped in as little as five years, after which the electricity generated is virtually free. Each building’s needs are different and we recommend speaking with a renewable energy professional to find the most cost and energy efficient option for you 

Below is our recommended four-step approach on how to get started on managing your climate impact.

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Step 1: How do I raise my team’s understanding of climate and why a climate action plan is important?

For a successful climate action plan, every member of your team should be on board and understand that your climate strategy is not only about saving the environment; it will also improve your company's competitiveness and resilience. We say this from experience: our team, and the teams of the businesses we work with, are trained on basic sustainability, encouraging climate-conscious changes to be integrated more seamlessly, and innovatively, throughout all departments.

Sharing this message can be challenging without a structured plan. There are many resources you could use to learn more, following industry-relevant environment news and webpages, such as the sustainability portal on ACCA, attending webinars, and listening to podcasts, including Sustainability Solved and Regenerative by Nature on Spotify. 

At Profit Impact, all of our team goes through basic sustainability training on Stickerbook, allowing everyone to get engaged in the process and begin to learn what they can do to contribute. Alongside this we have a specialised sustainability learning platform called MindSeed, which supports learning across people, planet and profit and helps the teams understand the link between all three.

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What is a climate action plan and how does it fit into sustainability?

Your sustainability strategy is a roadmap that aligns your business operations with long-term environmental, social, and economic goals. It moves beyond simple initiatives by setting measurable, science-based targets that reduce risk and create shared value for all stakeholders. 

Climate action plans, carbon reduction plans, and Net Zero strategies are all similar frameworks for reducing your greenhouse gas emissions, and are valuable parts of your sustainability strategy.

Your climate action planning is about taking actions such as increasing cost and operational efficiency to reduce your footprint on the earth, future-proofing your business, and creating a positive impact on your community, your employees, and your customers. 

This guide will help you get started on a climate action plan, and can be applicable for carbon reduction strategies and Net Zero as well. We also offer wider sustainability coaching for businesses, or you can learn more by reading other blog posts and free guides on our website.

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Step 2: How do I calculate my company’s carbon footprint?

The next step to making a climate action plan is calculating the carbon footprint of your business. To do so, you should first understand greenhouse gas emissions scopes.

Tip: If you’re new to measuring, start with scopes 1 and 2 as scope 3 is most challenging to measure, though scope 3 on average constitutes more than 70% of a company’s carbon footprint.

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To start measuring, you should choose a baseline year that represents a “typical” period of time for your business and for which you have sufficient data. Key sources for this data include energy bills, vehicle fuel logs, waste disposal records, and more. 

To calculate your emissions, you can choose one of two methods. If you are a small business, you can calculate your emissions manually in a spreadsheet by applying emissions factors to convert activity data (such as kWh or miles driven) into CO2e. Micro service businesses can also use tools which are available for free such as Sustrax. 

Businesses that are larger and/or sell a product would benefit from a paid-for sophisticated carbon accounting tools or platforms such as Sumday or Trace. We recommend assessing which platform to choose based on your budget, whether the tool integrates with your finance systems, and ease of use, among other business-specific factors.

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How do I analyse my carbon footprint?

To analyse your data, total your emissions by scope and identify high-impact areas. Most businesses find that their primary impact could be in places they may not have otherwise reviewed. In our internal audit, we discovered that Scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions in the value chain) accounted for the vast majority of our footprint. 

Another measure to help understand your emissions is your carbon intensity. You can measure your carbon intensity by using the following formula and considering any carbon credits or offsets your company has utilised during this period:

(total metric tons of CO2) / (revenue within the same period covered by the carbon emissions data)

You can get your emissions verified by a third-party if you’re bidding for government contracts, you want to assure stakeholders, and/or you aim to align with global frameworks such as B Corp. 

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Step 3: How do I create a strategy to reduce my emissions?

After measuring your company’s emissions you can come up with strategies to reduce your emissions. Some will be simple to introduce and some will take longer. Some reduction strategies will be dependent on changes outside of your business.

Our top emissions-reducing tips:

To manage your energy, you can check your energy provider’s online portal or mobile app, and evaluate how much of your energy is coming from renewables, as well as audit where you are spending your energy, and how you improve your efficiency. In fact, SMEs could achieve energy savings of up to 30% by making changes (source: energy saving trust from an analysis by IEA) without needing to compromise on output. If your energy is tenanted, you can ask your landlord for your consumption data and work with them to reduce emissions in centrally controlled zones, which would also reduce the landlord’s costs. You can also make behavioural changes, such as shutting everything off before leaving and reducing your tech’s energy consumption by closing tabs and only using necessary software. 

You can also use shipping and travel methods with lower environmental impact, such as rail, and use clean or low-emission vehicles wherever possible. Another option is optimising your packaging to reduce material usage and overall weight, which both reduces shipping costs and energy requirements for transportation. Additionally, hybrid working and route optimisation can both reduce costs for your company and employees, as well as reduce emissions. 

It is also important to understand your supplier’s emissions and their climate action plans (which refer to scope 3). By selecting low-emissions partners, you reduce your Scope 3 emissions and exert market pressure to amplify your impact. 

Beyond reducing emissions, you can work to integrate positive impact into your business, depending on your own sustainability goals. For example, Profit Impact invested in nature through adopting a plot of land and investing in rewilding there. 

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Step 4: How can I prepare my business for future changes?

Although not essential for a climate action plan, creating an opportunity and risk profile is an invaluable tool to future proof your business. Not only does this strategy allow you to map your company’s sustainability and climate risk, but it also allows you to prepare for regulatory and market changes: both positive and negative. Below is a subsection of our own profile:

Opportunity and Risks Profile:

Opportunity and risk profiles can take multiple forms, and you can decide what categories and measures you should include to best fit your business. Other possibilities beyond the ones we use include triggers to begin mitigation, or categories for the assets affected (such as employees, product, sales, etc) rather than a description. 

As growing businesses, it can be hard to think of the future when there is so much to do in the present, but what was once the future will one day become the present, and when it does, your business will be more likely to succeed if you have prepared for it. 

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How about services for building a sustainability strategy?

Profit Impact can be your personal specialists, there at your side with the knowledge, skills, and care to work with you to create the sustainability strategy that’s right for your business. 

Profit Impact is a small consulting business dedicated to improving your business’ sustainability and positive impact, while increasing your long-term profitability and resiliency. We guide from experience: since achieving our B Corp certification and establishing our Net Zero targets in 2022, we have maintained our Net Zero status by reviewing our footprint annually. This ensures that as we grow, our carbon footprint doesn't grow with us, and we can do the same for you. 

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Start your journey today

Profit Impact provides the roadmap for businesses that want to do the right thing and be more sustainable, but without the overwhelm. The businesses we work with can attest to how sustainability can be a strategy for growth (you can learn more by checking out our case studies on our website). We offer a variety of personalised services fit for businesses at different stages of their sustainability plan, including:

• Sustainability education service
• Hands-on carbon footprint calculation and climate action plans
• Tailored reduction strategies for Scope 1, 2, and 3
• Specialised impact strategy creation
• B Corp and PPN06 alignment and sustainability leadership training

We have seen how increasing your positive impact leads to increasing your profit, and so in addition to our coaching services through Mindseed (our online educational platform for sustainability), and B-Corp certification services, we offer FREE guides and a Know Your Number tool on our website to get you started.

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Book a call with Sarah today to transform your business into a 2026 sustainability leader.

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