Accountants

I believe the accountancy profession has the potential to play a huge leadership role in acting on the climate crisis. We as a profession have a role to play in solving this problem, and it will only be achieved through collective action across business, government, NGOs and civil society. ICAEW have already embarked on our decarbonisation journey and are here to support our members and firms by providing the necessary tools and guidance to do the same. We hope that the Net Zero Now Protocol will encourage our members to embark on their own net zero journeys.

Achieving net zero needs careful and consistent measurement, accounting, reporting and verification – and accountants’ skills are vital to realising all this. ACCA has supported the protocol development to help practitioners on their businesses journey. As a professional body with our own commitments to the UN SDGs - including achieving net zero - we know that our members are committed to contributing solutions in the public interest and achieving climate change targets. Being part of this prominent steering group will ensure a consistent and co-ordinated approach as reaching net zero cannot be done in silos – it needs integrated thinking, expertise and action.

AAT is pleased to be part of the influential steering group developing the Net Zero protocol for the accountancy sector. Sustainability and net zero are key themes for AAT and we welcome anything that can help engage and support our members in developing their businesses to drive the UK toward our national 2050 net zero target.

Tackling the climate crisis needs to be a collaborative effort including organisations of all sizes.  The Good Business Charter is a deeply practical accreditation and we want to ensure our current and potential members, especially the smaller ones with fewer resources to work on this, are connected in with effective ways they can meet net zero.  We have a good number of professional services firms and we believe working on a protocol that takes their specific industry and sets out tangible ways to achieve net zero will be such a valuable tool.  Given the range of sectors we encompass we look forward to sharing all of Net Zero Now's well-developed protocols with our members.

We are delighted to have worked with all of the leading voices in the accounting industry to develop this definitive guide to what it means for an accountancy practice to be Net Zero.  Evidence of the climate crisis is unequivocal and the question is no longer “if” businesses need to take action, but “how”.  The Net Zero Accountancy Protocol is the latest in a series of Net Zero Sector Protocols, developed alongside key industry bodies and designed to provide businesses in each sector with both a clear and consistent path to Net Zero and a way of communicating their achievements to their customers, employees and other stakeholders