The Dublin Chamber Sustainability Academy
Sponsored by 
About The Sustainability Academy
The Dublin Chamber Sustainability Academy, sponsored by AIB, has been set up to help businesses become more sustainable and to reduce their carbon footprint.
Launched by the Chamber's President Catherine Moroney in 2020, the Academy was created with Sustainability experts in response to demand from companies in Dublin for help in preparing for a carbon neutral economy.
Training and workshops will also be provided on carbon-footprinting, corporate sustainability and on the circular economy. Other core offerings will include helping participating companies, big and small, on the road toward carbon disclosure and green procurement processes.
Dublin Chamber's Sustainability Academy can assist your business regardless of what stage you are at on your sustainability journey.
In-Depth Course Overviews
Sustainability 101: Developing a Sustainable Framework for your Business
Course Overview:
This half-day course has been designed to provide participants with a practical introduction to sustainability, so they are equipped with the awareness, knowledge and skills required to develop a business roadmap for the company including company policy, strategic plan, measures and reporting. Focused on long-term sustainable behaviours across all aspects of their business including: carbon and climate change, energy, water, packaging, waste, biodiversity, sourcing, workplace and wider responsible business practice. The course will also cover how companies can use sustainability to drive competitive advantage and improve stakeholder relationships.
Course Objectives
• Develop an understanding of the importance and benefits of sustainability and the latest trends
• Build sustainability awareness, knowledge and best practices across the workforce and in all stakeholder conversations
• Explore a framework for implementation of a sustainability plan
• Ensure all personnel undergo appropriate training enabling them to make positive contributions to more sustainable business practices
• Provide enhanced communication of sustainability credentials to the firm’s stakeholders supply chain
Course Content
• An introduction to: sustainability, UN SDGs, circular economy, national landscape and key stakeholders
• Understanding the journey from beginner to leadership
• Developing a framework including policy, plans, measures and communication
• Global and national carbon, energy, water, and waste challenges, impacts, opportunities and benefits
• Practical advice on acting more sustainability and engaging with all stakeholders
• Biodiversity challenges and opportunities
• Supply chain sustainability and sourcing
• Bespoke and aligned corporate content and reporting
Towards Net Zero: Climate Strategy & Decarbonisation
Course Overview
Climate Change is an increasingly important topic for many businesses and organisations. Not only is it a key issue for those involved in energy and resource intensive sectors, climate change strategy is now a competitive issue for all businesses. Understanding and addressing how climate change is directly impacting business is now a key boardroom issue. In the world of increasing emissions and climate change, decarbonization is a key term used to describe phasing out of carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels. It is a critical aspect of managing the global greenhouse gas problem. We will help participants to understand how to measure and report climate change and carbon emissions and how to assess climate risk and opportunity in their organisations. Over these two mornings, we will share examples of best practise and recommended approaches to setting targets and decarbonization pathways towards Net Zero and explain other Science Based Targets.
Course Objectives
- Understand why Climate Change is of critical importance to business and how to can your organisation show climate leadership
- Why is climate change such an important issue for key stakeholders such as governments, financial institutions and our employees.
- Overview of how to measure, report, set targets and decarbonise your business.
- Understand the range of carbon targets, pledges and ambition and how to select an appropriate approach for your organisation.
- Upskill and enable organisations themselves to benchmark, monitor and improve their carbon footprints on an annual basis.
- Understand the principles of organisational and product environmental footprinting
- Understand the basics of carbon reporting and how to prepare and present annual carbon footprint reports at company, process and product levels.
- Understand how to engage with key stakeholders on the topic of climate change
- Understanding how to assess climate risk and opportunity
Course Content
- The business impact of Climate Change
- The key climate related trends and how these relate to the key sectors in Ireland.
- What is a Carbon Footprint and how does it relates to your business needs
- Introduction to Carbon Footprinting and the relevant measurement and reporting standards
- Carbon measurement and reporting standards
- Industry and sectoral carbon initiatives
- Reporting climate risk and opportunity - TCFD
- Understanding Scopes 1, 2 and 3, and what a company can do to reduce them
- Carbon target setting – Net Zero, Science Based Targets, Pledges Carbon Neutrality
- Carbon and Climate Change reporting and initiatives
- Decarbonization pathways and strategies
- The key stakeholder engagement on carbon
Carbon Footprint Measurement
Course Overview
“Carbon is the new business calorie”. Carbon is the metric by which we measure business environmental impacts. This half day course will enable companies to understand how to measure the global warming impacts of their operations, identify environmental hotspots and to take action to reduce these impacts. Setting boundaries, scopes and data collection procedures, we will share tools and process necessary for companies to conduct their own carbon footprint according to best practice global standards.
Course Objectives
- Practical understanding of how to conduct a carbon footprint of a business
- Understand what type of data to collect to measure the CO2 footprint.
- How to collect and organise the data
- How to interpret the data – what are the specific CO2 impacts of the energies, resources and materials used.
- Understand the principles of organisational and product environmental footprinting
- Tools, standards and sources of support
- Preparation and verification of annual carbon footprint reports at company, process and product levels.
Course Content
- Understanding the business impact of Climate Change
- Introduction to Carbon Footprinting
- Relevant measurement and reporting standards
- Setting carbon policy, boundaries and baselines
- The data collection process
- Sources of Carbon Factors
- What are scopes 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprints, and what a company can do to identify hotspots
- Principle of carbon footprinting at the product level
- Overview of carbon verification, target setting and reporting
The Circular Economy: Opportunities for Business
Course Overview:
An economy built solely on the principles of ‘take, make, waste’ is no longer viable. This course will help businesses to understand the circular economy, its business value and how to manage the transition to more circular processes. The course will outline the financial and environmental opportunities presented from product lifecycle management, designing for the Circular Economy, returns management, remanufacturing and avoiding and maximising the value of waste, as well as exploring new circular business models such as product as a service, rental and pay per use.
Course Objectives
• Understanding the Circular Economy opportunity and journey
• Transitioning to more circular business models
• Designing for the Circular Economy
• Measures and Tools to assist the transition
• Circular Process understanding - from waste to reuse
• Best practice and case studies in circularity
• Changing buyer and supplier behaviours in a Circular Economy
Course Content
• Understanding the circular economy
• Business value in a circular economy
• Products lifecycle – Designing for the Circular Economy
• Returns and Remanufacturing
• Waste – Avoiding waste and Maximising its value
• Circular Business Systems
• Measuring the impact of the Circular Economy
• Changing Buyer and Supplier Behaviours
• Technology fuelling the Circular economy
Resource Efficiency Training
Key Topics
• Understanding energy terminology, understanding bills, energy consumption and costs as a key aspects of business success
• Learning how to improve energy efficiency, technical solutions and staff awareness.
• Identification of waste in a business process and identification of opportunists to prevent, minimise and reuse waste
• Benchmarking energy, waste, and water for the business so that the business can compare its own environmental performance on a regular basis against best practice standards.
• Raising staff awareness on how they can improve business efficiency through adopting resource efficiency in the workplace
• Developing a resource efficiency action plan for the businesses including how to maintain this plan and achieve objectives
• Demonstrate to business where there are financial supports for the implementation of resource efficiency
Lecture Content & Learning Outcomes
• Scene setting for resource efficiency
• Energy: understanding energy terminology and consumption, understanding bills, learning how to minimize costs
• Energy monitoring, measurement, benchmarking, and auditing.
• Learning how to improve energy efficiency showcasing Irish Case studies from CTC managed programmes such as the Green Business programme
• Opportunities for renewable energy
• Water: understanding consumption, bills, benchmarking
• Learning how to minimize water consumption and costs.
• Waste: understanding the waste management hierarchy, identifying where waste is produced, understanding bills, benchmarking, learning how to prevent and minimise waste and costs
• Raise staff awareness on sustainability issues
On successful completion of this module, the Learner will be able to:
• Understand how to measure and benchmark energy, water, and waste in their business
• Will have identified a number of resource efficiency opportunities in their business
• Will have carried out ROI on a number of these RE opportunities (e.g. lighting retrofit, water control and waste prevention)
• Be aware of funding opportunities and grants for RE
• Be aware RE guidance documents and case studies from the NWPP
Green Public Procurement (GPP)
Green Public Procurement (GPP) training, the first of its kind being provided to the private sector, will be delivered by Bid Services. GPP is a process where public authorities seek to source goods, services or works with a reduced environmental impact.
The government’s Climate Action Plan and the EU’s Green Deal will require every public body to have a climate mandate. A key element of such a mandate will be using public procurement to deliver change. Therefore, all businesses will need to get up to date on how green public procurement will be part of their business development.
This session is aimed at: management, those in sustainability roles, procurement teams, and key suppliers.
Supports
The Academy offers participating businesses a comprehensive range of supports, including: training workshops, access to a dedicated series of sustainability events; green public procurement training; access to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP Ireland); support materials; and peer-to-peer idea sharing opportunities.
Dublin Chamber has identified a need for these supports through surveys and focus groups with companies, facilitated by Amárach Research.
For more information on how you can get involved please contact Máire Fay on maire@dublinchamber.ie