In this episode, Mike Egan and James Harman are joined by Marin Fahey, Head of Sustainability for Mitsubishi Electric UK & Ireland to discuss the topic of decarbonisation. They discuss Mitsubishi Electric own developments in this area and its Decarbonisation pledge and how other companies can kick start their decarbonisation journeys.

Mike Egan  00:11
All right. Welcome to the new series of ask me 2022. Myself, Mike Egan, Business Development Manager for Corporate Solutions.

James Harman  00:19
And myself, James Harman, also a business development manager in the Corporate Solutions team,

Mike Egan  00:25
and our guest today,

Martin Fahey  00:26
I'm Martin Fahey, I'm the head of sustainability for Mitsubishi Electric, UK and Ireland.

Mike Egan  00:34
Well, first of all, thank you guys for turning up today. So we're in the sunny Birmingham office. And the reason we're here is to talk about a topic of decarbonisation. Something which is talked by widely now. But if I go back when I joined nine years ago, Mitsubishi Electric, something which I never came across, I don't know. Same with yourself terms.

James Harman  00:58
Yeah, really, really interesting topic. Up until the last couple of years. It's it's something I hadn't come across. But it's something that clients are asking us how we can help their business, what solutions we can offer. And they're also interested in what Mitsubishi Electric are doing for decarbonisation within our organisation.

Mike Egan  01:18
Yeah, that rings true self, in fact, so you know, moving into this new role, and being more client focused is that this is the hot topic. It's the nothing, no conversation will not will always have this in mind. And one thing which I was conscious of, we've just been through last year ended last year there was COP26. So that raised the stakes in terms of people understanding about decarbonisation, and what that's around around the UK. But I think what we're, you know, what the idea of this day is to, is to look basically, inwardly and look at what Mitsubishi Electric have been doing. So we have the the pleasure of Martin with us today. So what we're going to do, Martin is going to, you know, have a few questions of fire here. And tell us a little bit more about what Mitsubishi Electric has been up to.

Martin Fahey  02:07
Of course, yep. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We've been on this journey now as Mitsubishi Electric for a lot of years, I was the sustainability manager, we call it the Green gateway manager role within our living environmental systems. Business, some 13 years ago now was the first time we we set ourselves out the ambition, I suppose to say, look, we could see this was a growing issue for us in our markets within that part of our business at the time, we are a solutions provider to buildings of every size, whether you live work or play in it. And we could see back then, that the discussion was evolving very much around how can we make these buildings at the time it was a straight discussion about efficiency. But that has grown. As your introduction highlighted there, Mike, I was fortunate enough to be at the copy events in Glasgow. And I came away from those with fired up really with a very clear understanding that governments, the UN bodies have set us the trajectory, we know where we need to go. Now we need to radically reduce our impacts as civilians as companies and as countries. But what I came away very much with was an understanding that it will be us as companies who are going to have to lead this lead this charge and make the changes required. So delighted to be here and looking forward to the discussion.

Mike Egan  04:04
So just just touching on cop 26. Did you find that do people go away knowing how to go ahead and look at this approach, you know, in terms of d carbon and net zero? Is there any you know, strategy you already had in mind? Or will people kind of ask them questions, so I know what we need to do. But how do I do it?

Martin Fahey  04:26
Well, it might be worth just highlighting the cop process. A cop stands for Conference of the Parties. And it brings together the countries of the world some around 200 Different nations all together every year to look at this. This problem that we all face, and cop 15 was in Paris and that is often referred to because it was there that those nations all agreed that we need to work together to make sure the global temperatures do not rise above an average of two degrees above pre industrial levels, and preferably keep that to be within one and a half degrees. And that was very much the focus in cop 26. They talk in terms of a ratcheting mechanism, whereby countries have a look at their plans and their targets. And are they robust enough? And are they following the science and what people left cop 26 with wild, they're saying, which was keeping 1.5 Alive was a sense that we can, if we all buckled down now and rally behind this as an effort as a global effort, we can keep global temperature rise to within that one degree 1.5 degree apologies. Now, recent reports tell us that we're very close to that already. So whereas we're looking to achieve what they call net zero in 2050, that may seem like a long, long way away. But we need to be halfway or more than halfway there by 2030, which as we sit here speaking, today is eight years away.

James Harman  06:18
I've found mine a lot of our clients, since cop 26, have kind of jumped off the back of that and made plans to be net zero. And probably the most common number for most of those clients is 2030 to be carbon neutral, but a lot of them as you say, haven't really got the actual process in place to get there. They've got the plan, but they haven't got the process. So it's just wondering kind of sort of steers down the route of what sort of steps they might take to get there. Yeah, of course,

Martin Fahey  06:48
what might be best is to highlight where we are in a global business. I mean, I have UK and Ireland responsibilities, but we have a far bigger team looking at this as our global footprint of some 150,000 employees, many factories, many offices, and different operations all around the world. Our environmental vision 2050, as we call it puts us on a journey to be net-zero by 2050. And I understand James, from what you're saying that a lot of people are pushing to go sooner than that. Yeah. But at the moment, that's, that's where we sit. So we we have put our plans in front of a body called science-based targets, they have independently verified that we do the things that we have laid out and plan to do, we will achieve net-zero and we will be where we need to be by 2030. Now you you've spoken about other companies that we're dealing with, are going at a quicker pace than that. Yeah. And that is a big subject of discussion in the community sustainability community. If you're like, at the moment, which is, do we need to go quicker? Do we need to go deeper is the two ways I would characterise it. So do we look to achieve Net Zero? Before 2050 2050? Is the absolute backstop? And should we be making sure that we do that with a one and a half degree trajectory as opposed to any other?

Mike Egan  08:35
So just Interestingly, though, is sometimes what I've come across is term carbon neutral. What's that one? That's confusing. Sometimes people talk about these and I'm a little bit. Yeah, can you help us?

Martin Fahey  08:48
It's a fair, it's, it's fair to be confused by them, because there's a lot of different terms out there. So you've mentioned carbon neutrality, carbon neutral, that is different from net zero. So it's probably worth just very briefly explaining that. So you could be in theory, carbon neutral, if you gather all the data of all yo...