THE CLIMATE CHOICE says thank you for a special 2022!

What a year for climate champions! We all faced major new challenges in 2022 – especially companies that were particularly hard hit by the energy crisis and supply chain bottlenecks. Despite everything, you, the CLIMATE community, have continued to work with us to drive the transformation to a low-carbon economy. There have been many positive highlights and developments for which we at THE CLIMATE CHOICE want to say thank you. Let’s take a look at how 2022 allowed us to boost climate transformation all around the globe!

Kicking off the year with strong, new partners

Our year began with a firework of climate action. We were able to start working with many new major and influential customers for the Climate Intelligence Platform, including, as two special highlights, the corporate projects with the mobile phone provider o2 Telefónica and the baby food manufacturer HiPP. We kicked off inspiring collaborations to elevate the transparency of emissions along their supply chains by using our platform.

HiPP was able to successfully identify climate-related risks and potentials of five suppliers with the help of our software tool. HiPP’s Head of Sustainability Management Dr. Johannes Knubben reflects: “The software tool from THE CLIMATE CHOICE enables us to implement a scalable and reliable process to increase the climate-relevant transparency of our supply chain.”

Our next goal is to extend the software-driven climate data collection initially to other partners and ultimately to HiPP’s supply chain. Through an integration of THE CLIMATE CHOICE software tool into HiPP’s sustainability and procurement strategy, the full potential of climate-relevant supplier management is to be exploited.

Our corporate project with o2 Telefónica also successfully identified climate-related risks and potentials of the selected suppliers. The company is now able to develop a transparent, scalable process for collecting comparable data on the climate maturity of suppliers.

In the next step, we will integrate our platform into the procurement dashboard of o2 Telefónica. The climate-relevant data collection for the decarbonization of Scope 3 will be extended to around 1,000 suppliers.

CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit 2022

The climate action kept on flowing and reached a new peak at our #CTS2022. For the third year in a row, we brought together international climate leaders and procurement experts for our two-day 100% online Climate Transformation Summit. 

We welcomed 64 speakers, who interacted with over 1,000 attendees from 59 different countries. Attendees had the chance to participate in 12 limited workshops together with our Partners from B.A.U.M. e.V., First Climate, BearingPoint, AXA Climate School, Enviria, Fairantwortung gAG, Katjes Fassin GmbH & Co. KG, Regionique, IBM, Make-IT Alliance, Telefónica Germany, EcoVadis, Alice Schmidt, ESG Portfolio Management,  Sustainable Procurement Pledge Germany, Development and Climate Alliance Foundation and WWF Germany. THE CLIMATE CHOICE says thank you!

More good news: We just announced the date for #CTS2023! We cannot wait to welcome you on May 11 & 12 2023 for two days full of climate action! Our focus this year: Making it happen – the decarbonization of supply chains! Together with you and leading experts, we will find out how we can impement CO₂ reduction along the value chain.

You can’t wait to secure your spot?
Get your Super Early-Bird ticket now!

You want to be a speaker, workshop host or partner? 
Let’s get in touch.

Launching CLIMATE Readiness Check

The most important insight we gained from the discussions at the #CTS2022 was that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular still find it very difficult to get a quick start in climate transformation because they often do not have sufficient know-how and/or resources. In response to this challenge, we worked over the summer on a new solution offering.

The result: In October, we launched our digital and freely available Climate Readiness Check in partnership with 10 leading sustainability organizations. Among those B.A.U.M. e.V., Bundesverband Nachhaltige Wirtschaft e.V. (BNW), Stiftung Allianz für Klima und Entwicklung, Jaro Institut für Nachhaltigkeit und Digitalisierung e.V., and the Deutscher Mittelstands-Bund (DMB).

The Climate Readiness Check offers SMEs an easy entry point into their climate transformation: through knowledge and insights into their own climate maturity, benchmarks, suggestions for improvement, and access to a B2B climate data platform.

Our Launch was a full success! We are beyond happy to see so many companies kicking off their climate transformation with our Climate Readiness Check! We can’t wait to see who will join us in 2023!

You too can conduct the Climate Readiness Check for your company now and get free access to our platform!

Kickstarter Program 2022

In addition to the projects we developed ourselves, this year we were also part of pioneering external initiatives. Among them, one highlight: In August, we were selected from more than 2.000 applicants for the Climate Lab and Kickstart Innovation scale-up program in the finance and insurance track! Kickstart is one of the largest European Innovation Platforms. Each year they chose a select number of the best international startups to participate in a 10-week program.

We were honored to work in the program with corporates – such as Swisscom, Credit Suisse, AXA, Sanitas, Post Finance, La Mobilière, Coop, CSS, SATW – from the DACH region, who strive to reduce climate risks and emissions in value chains.

Thanks for the EU ‘Best Digital Solution’ Award

The cherry on top of 2022 was winning the “Best Digital Solution” award from the European Commission. The award recognizes the development of our software platform for the collection of climate-relevant data from suppliers and attributes it great impact potential for the greening and digitalization of European industry.

On behalf of the European Commission’s DG GROW, Deputy Director General Hubert Gambs emphasized: “Digital solutions are not only useful to be competitive and provide better value to European customers. They are also key to making our economy greener and European businesses more resilient to future shocks.”

We are so grateful and can’t wait to enable more businesses in boosting their climate transformation!

Many, many thanks for driving our Mission together!

Our mission at THE CLIMATE CHOICE is transforming every company into a climate champion and enabling businesses to make procurement decisions that are aligned with the 1.5-degree-goal! We have summarized our mission for you in this short video.

We are very grateful to work with inspiring companies – and that media is increasingly sharing our mission. THE CLIMATE CHOICE says thank you Süddeutsche Zeitung, t3n, Berliner Morgenpost, Gründerszene and many more, for featuring our platform and allowing us to gain more visibility on our mission! 

Our Wrap up, 2022!

Let’s wrap it up before we go back to wrapping presents. 2022 was a complicated year for the world. We learned that the energy transition is a major driver for the overall climate transformation. We literally saw that it is interlinked with peace and has a positive impact on people, planet and profit. At the THE CLIMATE CHOICE we are therefore honoured that we were able to work on one piece of the puzzle – bringing us towards a regenerative future. These are our 5 highlights:

1. Started working with major new customers, including HiPP and o2 Telefónica
2. Held our 3rd 100 % digital CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit with 64 speakers and 1.000 participants from 59 countries 
3. Launched our new Climate Readiness Check, accessible for companies of all sizes for free to kick off their climate transformation
4. Won the EU ‘Best Digital Solution’ award of the Get Digital Initiative from the European Commission and the European DIGITAL SME Alliance
5. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Gründerszene, t3n, Berliner Morgenpost, Beschaffung aktuell and many more shared our work

Our biggest ‘THANK YOU’ goes to you, Climate Champion! If you are reading this, you are dedicating your valuable time to make this climate transformation a positive one. Whether you are Sustainability Manager, Procurement Expert, or Tech Champion: You are on a mission to strive together with us for an economy that allows the world to stay below 1.5 degree. Let’s start the new year with the same energy and even more climate action. Cheers to 2023!

Your #TeamClimate

THE CLIMATE CHOICE

Why the CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit makes 2022 our year for actions!

Wow, what an energy! One week has passed since the 2 interactive days of the third edition of the CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit ended. It is time to celebrate, to look back at the numbers, results and what we achieved together as CLIMATE Community.

A DREAM CLIMATE TEAM + A DOG
First of all, what I can share with you: a few months of inspiring work flowed into the #CTS2022! Which I was happy to lead together with our dedicated team from THE CLIMATE CHOICE – composed by Max and Lara, and the continuous support of our Growth Team. Sometimes even our office dog ‘Sunny’ brought in the necessary energy. But it did not stop here. We had countless enthusiastic helpers, partners and supporters who did everything to make the Summit valuable and meaningful. An incredibly big THANK YOU in advance to all of you. It was wonderful to be able to work with you!

BUILDING UP A GLOBAL CLIMATE COMMUNITY

So let me get you into the journey we took together. It all started as a brainstorming on an excel spreadsheet, and turned into an amazing event less than 6 months later. Gathering 1,000 climate enthusiasts, decision makers and curious people from around the world, all interested in learning more about climate transformation, and in particular about Decarbonisation of Companies and their Supply Chains. Fast forward: we kicked off the 100% online summit on 2nd June, with participants and experts joining from many many different countries.

STARTING A CLIMATE REVOLUTION

As stated by our co-founder Lara during her Welcome Speech: “We see now more than ever, companies need to step up and go into a sustainability revolution, but they need to act now, as the window of opportunity is closing faster and faster”. I bet the majority of us today would agree on this need for a sustainability revolution, driving a successful climate transformation of economy and within companies, but probably only few of us would know exactly what to do to get it started.

CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION IS A MATTER OF HOW, NOT IF

So let’s go deep here on actions! These are the three most important steps we learned about climate actions at #CTS2022.

The first point of departure would be to understand your individual status quo. Where does your company stand, how climate mature is it and which actions are already taken?  This step requires collecting all climate relevant data on your business and along the supply chain. This allows you to learn where you stand and to make assumptions about where you are most likely heading. As you may guess, this can be difficult to acknowledge, but it is the only way to start. With you and your own actions.

Therefore the only logical next step is to get active and find ways to reduce emissions. This most often brings in a new challenge, remembering that your accountability does not end at the borders of your company, but that the supply chain is where up to 90% of the total corporate emissions typically are generated.

Facing this hurdle brings you to step three: collaborate with your suppliers to align climate strategies, to share best practices and implement solutions to reduce emissions together. Useless to say that these can also create a positive impact on cost reduction, efficiency and sometimes even other sustainability issues such as loss of biodiversity, labor rights or plastic waste.

Allowing for best practices sharing around these three steps, on the first day,  we looked into how to become truly climate neutral, and then, on the second day,  went deeper into how to create and manage collaborative supply chains transformation and a planet proof procurement.

LEARNING FROM CHANGE AGENTS 

We welcomed over the course of the  two days over 64 speakers (of which proudly 52% were female, which we were able to achieve for the first time!!), who spoke with our audience composed of 30% of corporates and 15% of SMEs and a 55% going as ‘others’, such as start ups,  NGOs, Institutes or self-employed people, overall coming from 59 different countries.

THE MOST ACTIVE CLIMATE COMMUNITY

In fact, this year’s summit was for the first time entirely held in English, which made its CLIMATE Community more international than ever, with the top 10 countries represented being Germany, Austria, India, Switzerland, Netherlands, UK, Spain, France, Italy and USA!

The summit required, besides a strong internet connection, also a lot of focus, to grasp the insights shared during the various sessions, which were super interactive and helped answer questions coming from the participants. In fact, the #CTS2022 attendees deserve a special applause, as they were getting the most out of the  event platform we used. On average a participant spent an unbelievable amount of time:11 hours! Celebrating this huge level of commitment and lively contribution, we honored our 3 most active participants with the CLIMATE Community award. Thanks for your outstanding engagement!

GETTING YOUR HAND DIRTY 

Furthermore, attendees had the chance to participate in two of the 12 limited workshops we prepared for them, together with our Partners from  B.A.U.M. e.V., First Climate, BearingPoint, AXA Climate School, Enviria, Fairantwortung gAG, Katjes Fassin GmbH & Co. KG, Regionique, IBM, Make-IT Alliance, Telefónica Germany, EcoVadis, Alice Schmidt, ESG Portfolio Management,  Sustainable Procurement Pledge Germany, Development and Climate Alliance Foundation and WWF Germany.

Quite amazingly, 73% of the attendees participated in a workshop, and loved it so much that the most recurring feedback was that we should have even more workshops next year! By looking at the attendance, it turns out that the  most popular topics covered in the workshops were the ESG regulations & EU Taxonomy reporting, the En-ROADS simulation and a concrete example on how to decrease emissions with a company and along the supply chain.

DISCOVERING CLIMATE SOLUTIONS 

Last but not least, the online fair, showcasing 26 different Climate Pioneers, was also available to our  attendees. They had the chance to meet the exhibitors at their booth, learn about their solutions and discuss possible business opportunities. A total number of around 4.500 visits to all booths was tracked down!

Which leads us to the last highlight of the online fair. We gave all attendees the opportunity to vote for the CLIMATE Champion Awards, which had all Exhibitors competing in the following three categories: 

• Climate Solution Pioneer (the exhibitor offering the best climate solution to decarbonise companies);
• Supply Chain Transformer (the exhibitor offering the best climate solution to transform supply chains);
• Exhibitor Hero (best booth design and most welcoming exhibitor).

The voting results saw 3 companies winning over the others, respectively CarbonStack (Climate Solution), THE CLIMATE CHOICE (Supply Chain Transformer) and Enviria (Exhibitor Hero). Thanks therefore for everyone voting, but a huge congratulations to all exhibitors – you do amazing work!

AFTER THE SUMMIT: MOVING TO ACTIONS

Overall, I had an amazing experience and it was an impactful event of which our Team Climate is proud of. But most importantly, now is the time for action. We learned a lot, we shared more and made valuable business connections. Let’s go out and start the CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION in our daily lives and business decisions, see you next year!

Many thanks for everyone working with us, and me, on this #CTS2022 journey! I am very excited to move to a new role now within THE CLIMATE CHOICE, supporting our Growth & Customer Happiness Team. Stay tuned, sign up for our CLIMATE News and thus don’t miss on our next events, whitepapers and shared opportunities for Climate Actions! 

Your CLIMATE Team & Chiara

Our WHY behind the #CTS2022

Climate action is all about collaboration and we need to start thinking (and acting) beyond the company’s borders! How can we fulfill the latest regulations? Which innovations should we have on our radar? What are best practices of climate-progressive companies?

We believe that we can all learn from each other’s experiences to boost #climatetransformation! That is our ‘WHY’ behind our third CLIMATE Transformation Summit on June 2nd and 3rd.

As Dr. Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown said last year at #CTS2021: 

 “It is not too late to stop climate change – the only thing stopping us is us. We have the tools, we have enough solutions to stop climate change and we can add more tools and solutions as we go.”

Dr Jonathan Foley – Project Drawdown

How do we go about it? At the CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit 2022, over 900 Speakers, Climate Pioneers and Climate Solution Providers will gather to discuss Best-Practices of the Climate Transformation. Trend topic of this year’s climatesummit.de will be the decarbonization of companies and their supply chains. At the #CTS2022 we are going to raise questions of how to effectively reduce CO₂ along entire supply chains. We will share success stories and will learn from each other’s experiences – Together we design, create and discuss. For two days, live and 100% online. And the best part: You can participate!

On June 2nd and 3rd, we will all be part of the solution! We will work together to make our goal – decarbonising companies and their supply chains – a reality. In interactive Panels, Fireside Chats, Speed-Networking Sessions and an Online Fair, we will talk openly about challenges and opportunities and discover tangible climate solutions! In deep-dive workshops, you can share your insights, clarify your questions, actively participate and get to know the community. 

The Agenda of #CTS2022 – Changing the economy together

We already know how to tackle the Climate Transformation! Today, Climate-Tech and Green-Tech innovations from different fields enable innovative climate solutions. Get to know the climate experts and solution providers at the #CTS2022:

Among others, we will have Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf (PIK), Yvonne Zwick (B.A.U.M. e.V.), Gaby Symonds (Nestlé Germany AG), Dr. Jonathan Foley (Project Drawdown), Therese Seiringer (Vodafone Germany), Johannes Knubben (HiPP), Gundula Ullah (FUNKE Mediengruppe), Tom Raftery (SAP) and many more.

In order to find ways for a regenerative future, we need to bring the climate debate out of the niche and into the broad economy and provide practical steps to implement Climate Transformation in businesses. And since we already know that the supply chain is the biggest lever of Climate Transformation, it gets clear: We can only do it together!

Transparency, Collaboration and Data!

We are looking forward to learning from our speakers, coming from international corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Telefónica Germany, SIEMENS and Nestlé as well as from CLIMATE Pioneers such as WWF, Project Drawdown and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact! All of them are ready to share valuable business insights with you into how their organization is tackling the biggest opportunity of our time: The Climate Transformation! 

How do we engage all relevant stakeholders and how do we establish a functional supplier-management? At the #CTS2002, these are only some of the questions that will be answered by leading Climate Experts. Topics like climate-relevant procurement decisions and data-driven solutions for climate performance assessments will be covered. Businesses will get insights on how to prepare for upcoming climate-related disclosure requirements, such as the EU-Taxonomy, and companies will get to know innovative ways on how to collaborate with suppliers, in order to move towards a climate-relevant economy, together!

YOUR SUMMIT, YOUR CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION! 

The #CTS2022 is exactly what you are looking for? You can still get a ticket! The CLIMATE TRANSFORMATION Summit invites all decision-makers, climate officers, buyers, green tech entrepreneurs, self-employed, researchers and interested parties who want to implement relevant climate transformation measures and best practices now! 

TOGETHER WITH STRONG PARTNERS!

The summit connects solution providers and companies, as well as interested parties and experts. The #CTS2022 is made possible to a large extent by its great supporters! Without B.A.U.M. e.V., First Climate, Ørsted, BearingPoint, AXA Climate School, Enviria, Fairantwortung gAG, Katjes Fassin GmbH & Co. KG, Regionique, IBM, Make-IT Alliance and StackFuel, the Summit would not be possible! Likewise, our terrific media partners make the Summit a real community event! Thank you for your support and enthusiasm, which makes us look forward to the Summit with great excitement. It’s wonderful that you are all here! 

Since we want to make climate transformation accessible to as many people as possible, the Transformation Ticket is for those who cannot afford the ticket due to the current situation. It gives you access to all event points. Please send us an email to kontakt@theclimatechoice.com – subject: Transformation-Ticket. We are looking forward to seeing you!