Net Zero Plan – Statement of Fact
Tide’s Journey to Net Zero
“At Tide, we are taking decisive action to curtail the spiralling effects of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s atmosphere. Tide commits today to balance the books on CO2e for good.
We at Tide may not make much of a difference on our own. But by supporting our growing international network of SME members, we will.
We’re proud to be the first fintech in the world to remove 100% of emissions and become a fully Net Zero business by 2030 by continuing to reduce our emissions annually. At the same time, we’ll also carry on making major and ongoing investments in durable carbon removal.’’
CFO & Head of Net Zero, Ian Sutherland
Why take action now?
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our times. The effects are being felt all over the planet. We’re seeing glaciers melting and oceans warming, drought in the global south and extreme weather events in the northern hemisphere, as well as hotter summers. Climate change represents a catastrophic risk to future stability and growth.
That’s why we’re taking sharp and decisive action on Net Zero now and not delaying it until it’s too late.
With this, we’re also trying to raise the bar globally. It’s a signpost to other companies that they too can accelerate their journey to Net Zero now.
This is Tide’s approach.
This year, we commit to the following three pledges:
- Pledge 1: Tide Removal Net Zero – Tide commits to removing 100% of our emissions with durable carbon removal from 2022 onwards.
- Pledge 2: Tide Reduction Net Zero – Tide will reduce 90% of our 2021 emissions per employee by 2030. In doing so, we will reduce emissions by 97% on a revenue basis.
- Pledges 1 and 2 will make Tide fully Net Zero by 2030.
- Pledge 3: Tide Member Net Zero – Tide commits to making Net Zero simpler for our Members by developing support for them to get to Net Zero.
Pledge 1: Tide Removal Net Zero – Tide commits to removing 100% of our emissions with durable carbon removal from 2022 onwards.
This year Tide became the first fintech globally to remove 100% of its emissions (from 2022) by buying 3,711 tonnes of carbon removals, stored in biochar.
This puts Tide into a forward thinking and action-oriented group of businesses, and places the Group in the top 20 carbon removal buyers in the world. You can go to the CDR.fyi registry, an open registry of high-permanence carbon removal for more information.
The retirement statements, certifying Tide are here: and here.
Biochar
Biochar is one of the safest, most durable and fastest ways to draw down carbon and store it for long periods of time, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Biochar is a kind of charcoal (up to 95% carbon) produced when waste plant matter is heated in a very low-oxygen environment – a process called pyrolysis. Biochar is used to enrich garden soils and improve water retention, but its long-term carbon sequestration properties make it a kind of wonder-material in the fight against global heating.
Every year Tide will remove 100% of its emissions by purchasing carbon removals, speeding up Tide’s journey to Net Zero. Tide plans to extend a carbon removal facility to its Member businesses soon.
Pledge 2: Tide Reduction Net Zero – Tide will reduce 90% of our 2021 emissions per employee by 2030. In doing so, we will reduce emissions by 97% on a revenue basis. Pledges 1 and 2 will make Tide fully Net Zero by 2030.
Tide’s investment in carbon removals runs alongside our ambitious reduction targets.
We recognise that to be truly Net Zero we must dramatically reduce our own emissions and therefore our environmental impact.
We also need to ultimately meet the standards of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), an international coalition that includes the United Nations and the WWF.
The SBTi guides best practice targets. With this in mind, Tide has committed to reducing 90% of our own 2021 emissions per employee by 2030, and by 97% on a revenue basis.
GHG Protocol – Scopes 1, 2, 3
To take action to reduce emissions, companies need to understand and measure where they’re sourced from in the first place.
We’re monitoring our emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG), the most widely used international accounting tool and the global industry standard for measuring carbon emissions.
The three scopes are part of the GHG Protocol.
We worked with carbon removal platform, Supercritical, to measure our Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions.
The three scopes are a way of categorising the different kinds of GHG emissions a company creates in its operations and value chains.
Baseline Year 2021
The year Tide started measuring its Greenhouse Gas emissions
Additional Details relating to the Baseline Emissions calculations
2021, our baseline year, as well as 2022, are listed by category.
Scope 1 emissions
- Direct emissions – emissions directly from operations that are owned or controlled by the reporting company (e.g. company cars, emissions from company’s product). Tide has almost no scope 1 emissions.
Scope 2 emissions
- Indirect Emissions – emissions from the generation of purchased or acquired electricity, heating, or cooling consumed by the reporting company. For Tide, this includes, for example, office heating and electricity, which are purchased by landlords on our behalf.
Scope 3 emissions
- Indirect emissions – all indirect emissions (not included in Scope 2) that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions.
For Tide, this includes business travel, employee remote working, commuting, cloud hosting, procurement, software usage and marketing but excludes Members.
Tide’s Audit
Tide engaged Carbon Footprint Ltd, a company that tracks and reduces carbon emissions at source as much as possible and to compensate for unavoidable emissions; to render the activities of businesses to be Net Zero carbon/carbon neutral.
Tide worked with Carbon Footprint to verify Tide’s carbon footprint assessment and supporting evidence for the period 1st January 2021 to 31 December 2022.
Carbon Footprint Ltd completed the review in accordance with the ‘ISO 14064 Part 3 (2019): Greenhouse Gases: Specification with guidance for the verification and validation of greenhouse gas statements’. The work was undertaken to provide a limited level of assurance with respect to the GHG statements made.
The following activities were undertaken during the verification by Carbon Footprint:
- Initial review of the GHG documentation and methodologies, including historical GHG data for the period 1st January 2021 to 31st December 2021 and the 1st January 2022 to December 2022.
- Remote Audit, involving discussions with staff from Tide and Supercritical, regarding:
- Scope of calculation (including appraisal boundaries).
- Input data sets, any missing data, estimations made and assumptions.
- Calculation methodology and conversion factors used.
- Quality control procedures.
Results and interpretation
Carbon Footprint has issued an opinion that Tide has established appropriate systems for the collection, aggregation, and analysis of quantitative data for the determination of GHG emissions for the stated period and boundaries. As a result Tide is a CO2e certified organisation under the Carbon Footprint Standard ™.
And finally:
Pledge 3: Tide Member Net Zero – Tide commits to making Net Zero simpler for our Members by developing support for them to get to Net Zero.
To make a real difference, we must help our Members – who make up 9% of all UK SMEs – to decarbonise.
The task of achieving Net Zero can seem overly complex and even overwhelming to many small and medium-sized businesses. In the coming years we plan to roll out a range of products, services and apps to make the process of monitoring and reporting carbon emissions easier.
We also plan to launch our first Net Zero service later in 2023.
We view Member Net Zero as a huge responsibility and opportunity. Tide itself has nearly 500,000 members in the UK, part of the 5.5 million SMEs who could also make this transition.
In light of the cost of doing business challenges and the need for greater energy security, we sincerely believe this is the moment for companies to pivot towards renewables and greater energy and resource-efficiency.
Businesses that invest in transformation now are better positioned to be the winners of the future.
Tide is an early and active member of the campaigning initiative Bankers for Net Zero that brings together banks, businesses, and regulators to enable them and their clients to accelerate the transition to Net Zero. Through this, we plan to develop practical solutions to support small businesses.
*See Science Based Targets Initiative for more information.
Ian Sutherland
Tide CFO – Head of Net Zero
We are open to working with others: From product partners to ideas, let us know by reaching out NetZero@tide.co.
Click here for our full Net Zero Plan & FAQs.