The Good Business Festival

On 8 October we took part in Act 1 of The Good Business Festival, an event for people who believe in the power of business to address social and environmental problems whilst generating higher returns and longevity.

Our headline session, 'Pathway out of a climate emergency', delivered in collaboration with Deloitte and moderated by Broadcaster Aasmah Mir, explored the latest climate science and what it means for businesses now and in the future.

The session opened with a future forecast for the year 2050. The video is a stark illustration of what we can expect to experience by summer 2050 under a high emissions scenario. As well as rising temperatures, the video outlines some of the other physical changes in the climate we can expect by 2050 and how these would impact business and industry.

Met Office Chief Executive, Professor Penny Endersby, introduced the session: “We have already seen at least 1 degree of warming since pre-industrial times, and the science indicates that some warming is set to continue no matter what efforts are undertaken to reduce emissions over the next couple of decades.

“So, this means businesses are faced with two challenges. The first is to do everything we can to reduce our own emissions and contribute to the net efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change. That’s the mitigation challenge.

“And the second, is to make sure that businesses are as resilient as possible, strengthening their assets and adapting their business models. That’s called the adaption challenge.”    

Tom Butcher, Head of Scientific Consultancy at the Met Office, gave an overview of the latest climate science and outlined what this means for businesses.

Tom and Sam Baker, Partner at Deloitte, discussed with Aasmah some of the ways businesses have started to respond to the dual challenge of mitigation and adaption. They also shared key insights into next steps for businesses in moving to a low-carbon, resilient and valuable future.

Sam introduced delegates to the Goal 13 Impacts Platform - a project involving a number of partners, including the Met Office, that aims to accelerate business’ progress in reducing C02 emissions and enhancing resilience. Find out more about this initiative through the link in the related resources section below.

A recording of this session is available on The Good Business Festival website for the next 12 months.

Related resources

Future weather forecast for the year 2050

Watch the future weather forecast for 2050 to find out about some of the impacts that businesses can expect to experience in the future under a high emissions scenario.

You can also go behind the scenes and watch the making of the future weather forecast for 2050 which tells you more about the data and computer model we used to produce the video.

Goal 13 Impacts Platform: emerging findings

In this article on Deloitte's website, you can discover more about the Goal 13 Impacts Platform including how to contribute, as well as download the 'Goal 13 Impacts Platform: emerging findings report'.

UK Climate Projections

The UK Climate Projections (UKCP) provides the most up-to-date assessment of how the UK climate may change in the future. On this page you will find information to help inform your climate change risk assessments and adaption plans.

UKCP18 Demonstration Projects

This set of six project leaflets demonstrate how different sectors might use the latest set of UK climate projections.

Weather and climate consulting

On this page you can find out more about how we can help you manage the risks and realise the opportunities associated with day-to-day weather, extreme events and future climate conditions. Alternatively you can get in touch via one of the contact options to the right of this page.