Climate Action Guide

Drought, forest fires, and melting ice caps: the climate crisis is an existential threat to human life on Earth. The Paris Climate Agreement shows that the actions of governments alone will not be enough to prevent a climate catastrophe. For Ferry Heilemann, digital entrepreneur and founder of the Leaders for Climate Action initiative, one thing is therefore very clear: businesspeople need to do their bit to contribute towards global climate protection. How can a business measure its own carbon footprint? How can CO² emissions be reduced in the shortest time possible? What specific steps are required to achieve this? And how can effective alliances be built up between businesses and their surroundings? With the aid of precise checklists, recommendations for practical action, and background knowledge, the Climate Action Guide shows how businesses can implement straightforward measures and make an important contribution to the protection of our planet - in the process also making themselves future-proof. The first action guide for businesses which want to take practical action to protect the climate.

Ferry Heilemann is an entrepreneur, an investor, and a climate activist. In 2009, after completing his degree course, he and his brother Fabian founded DailyDeal, the first European couponing portal. They later sold the company to Google. Heilemann also founded Forto, a digital freight forwarding company, built up a team of more than 300 employees, and then, in the summer of 2020, moved to a position on the shareholder advisory board in order to be able to put more of his efforts into the fight against climate change. One of his projects in this area has been co-founding the Leaders for Climate Action initiative, whose goal is to make the entire digital industry climate neutral. In 2020, he was named 'Germany's top entrepreneur'.

Auteur
Ferry Heilemann is an entrepreneur, an investor, and a climate activist. In 2009, after completing his degree course, he and his brother Fabian founded DailyDeal, the first European couponing portal. They later sold the company to Google. Heilemann also founded Forto, a digital freight forwarding company, built up a team of more than 300 employees, and then, in the summer of 2020, moved to a position on the shareholder advisory board in order to be able to put more of his efforts into the fight against climate change. One of his projects in this area has been co-founding the Leaders for Climate Action initiative, whose goal is to make the entire digital industry climate neutral. In 2020, he was named "Germany's top entrepreneur".

Échantillon de lecture

CHAPTER 1
WE NEED TO ACT NOW
THE THREAT WE FACE IF THOSE IN THE BUSINESS WORLD FAIL TO SHOULDER THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES

The fact that we can't go on like this is something we have known for a long time. Pretty much since 1859.

This was when Edwin L. Drake was sent to Titusville, Pennsylvania, because his superiors at the recently founded Seneca Oil Company suspected that there might be oil under their property there. They wanted Drake to promote it, marketing it as a fuel for oil lamps. At the time there had never been a successful attempt at drilling a commercial oil well, and Drake too ran into technical problems. He spent more than a year in his wooden shack, driving the drill down through earth and rock. But then he struck lucky. On 27th August 1859, when he had drilled down to a depth of 21 metres, he hit the greasy black liquid.1

In that very same year, the Irish scientist and passionate mountaineer John Tyndall was trying to answer a very different question. The earth radiates heat which originates from the sun, and he wanted to know whether there really were gases in the atmosphere which could absorb this heat and send it back down to the ground.

French mathematician and physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier had already hypothesised, and outlined, this natural greenhouse effect more than 30 years before, but had not been able to prove it. Tyndall, on the other hand, managed precisely this in his laboratory. He confirmed that - alongside hydrogen, methane and other gases - carbon dioxide (CO2) is able to hold heat within the earth's atmosphere. The higher the concentration, the higher the temperature.2

The birth of the "age of oil" was thus accompanied by a new understanding of the consequences of burning fossil fuels. We have now had more than 160 years to draw the right conclusions from the works of these two pioneers, Edwin L. Drake and John Tyndall. But not a lot has happened. To this very day, even following the Paris Agreement of 2015, we still produce vast quantities of CO2. Even the COVID-19 pandemic, which in 2020 led to a seven percent reduction in emissions, does not mark any change in the general trend, which shows barely any signs of reversing. This makes it all the more important finally to do something, and to convert the knowledge we have had for so long into action.

Image based on data from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

Who, if not we businesspeople, could be predestined for this role? Whilst individual consumers and members of the public might have very little influence, with political decisions commonly being based on the lowest common denominator, businesspeople have quite a bit of leverage and room to be creative. They can implement decisions of great consequence with great rapidity, and they are used to doing so. My hope, therefore, is that the business world will contribute a decisive stimulus, spurring the world on towards a carbon-neutral economy.

From baking waffles to the Google deal

The kinds of changes that can be made are something I experienced even as a schoolboy. Together with my brother Fabian, I bought a machine for making ChiChis, a French style of waffle. At big events, such as Kieler Woche (Kiel Week) we sold them from a home-made trailer. It was a stressful business, and not without its own risks, but some weekends we would make as much as 1,000 euros each. Quite a lot of money for a teenager; so much, in fact, that we were even able to employ our friends.

Having completed my studies at the WHU business school in 2009, and thinking back to this first entrepreneurial experience, Fabian and I started something new: DailyDeal, an internet couponing portal. Yet again, we were the novices in a competitive, extremely aggressive e