Net Zero

Net zero: the companies leading decarbonisation in the UK

The climate emergency is one of the most pronounced existential risks facing humankind and we’re running out of time to prevent the crisis. We’re creating a list of every UK company that is building products, solutions or technology that will help to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions in the expectation that our data will help investors and policy makers to speed up and better coordinate activity.

No-one has been able to build a real-time, always updated, view of companies involved in decarbonisation before, but The Data City’s machine learning technology means we can. We’re now looking for experts to help us test our taxonomies and refine our beta lists across a range of sectors.

Why is a list of net zero companies in the UK necessary?

The Climate Change Committee’s 2019 report Net Zero The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming outlined the potential to achieve deep emissions reduction in the UK. It made a fresh appraisal of the costs and benefits to the UK economy of doing so.

It concluded that net-zero ‘is necessary, feasible and cost-effective’.

However, it also warned that this is only possible if “clear, stable and well-designed policies to reduce emissions further are introduced across the economy without delay. Current policy is insufficient for even the existing targets.”

The UK’s first net zero companies map

Policy cannot be devised in the absence of accurate data on the industries and supply chains involved. So we’re building the first-ever real-time dataset of companies playing an active role in decarbonisation and net-zero.

Net zero is an outcome and not a sector, so our mapping covers companies in the following industries, and their sub-sectors.

  • Low-carbon electricity
  • Efficient buildings and low-carbon heating
  • Electric vehicles
  • Green financing
  • Low carbon fuel
  • Energy retailers
  • Heating engineers
  • Carbon capture and storage
  • Diversion of biodegradable waste from landfill
  • Waste management
  • Phasing-out of fluorinated gases
  • Afforestation, carbon sequestration, biomass production and peatland restoration
  • AgriTech and measures to reduce emissions on farms
  • Aviation and shipping emission reduction

 

We’re looking for experts and net-zero heroes

We  augment human expertise with machine learning to produce comprehensive, machine learning based, always updated lists of companies in every sector.

Our database is now at 400GB of data on the UK’s companies. It is quick too, as our CTO Tom Forth said in our recent Data City release notes “Using machine-learning and instant keyword filtering, our unique process lets users classify companies into sectors of the economy not covered by SIC codes. They are achieving more in days and weeks than they used to in months and years.”

This pace is particularly important as time runs out in the face of the climate emergency. Traditional consulting reports are just too slow, and too static, to effect change quickly enough.

Our partners and experts will be the first to have access to, analyse and report on, the UK’s net zero companies in the UK with more accuracy than ever before.

  • Identify sectors that are important contributors to net-zero
  • Define the taxonomy for those sectors
  • Review Beta lists to help our analysts train our machine learning tech

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