The Wonderful Wizard of Decarbonisation - Lived–Experiences on the Green Brick Road

Net zero carbon initiatives and decarbonisation are gaining popularity as approaches that hold a promise to mobilise government, business, and civic action towards addressing concerns over the climate emergency. The UK Government has set challenging targets in terms of carbon reduction and is pursuing wide–scale net zero interventions through local industrial strategies supported by the national and international funding programmes. SMEs are increasingly becoming a focus of funded business support towards decarbonisation. So how are the SMEs responding to decarbonisation interventions? What are the intended and un–intended consequences of decarbonisation in a small or medium size business context? This study sets out to ascertain, through a phenomenological lens, how SMEs are discovering what net zero carbon ambitions look like within their businesses, how they are approaching decarbonisation and what are the impacts of the decarbonisation initiatives undertaken. Six SMEs from a variety of sectors in the East Midlands (UK), in receipt of support from an on–going ERDF funded project, were interviewed for this study. Participants were asked to share experiences in terms of their initial perspective on what net zero business would look like and to consider the support they received. The decarbonisation journeys and the outcomes were explored with the emphasis on the practices and participants, and the planned and achieved carbon reduction outcomes. The decarbonisation journey through the project is examined in three phases: before, during and after the journey. The role of the external assistance in the journey to net zero was also explored as part of the study. Interpretative analysis of all the interview transcripts revealed three overarching themes: (i) Technology is a significant enabler of decarbonisation; (ii) Data is essential to enable positive change to happen; and (iii) Business support is important for the uptake of the decarbonisation initiatives. Therefore, based on this information, the study surmises that companies need external guidance to make the decarbonisation actions possible, which includes provision of data and a sounding board for ideas, plus extra funding and assistance are needed to achieve the targets set by the UK Government.