Pledge 1: Tide Removal Net Zero – Tide commits to removing 100% of our emissions with durable carbon removal from 2022 onwards.
Tide commits today to balancing the books on CO2 for good.
Pledge 1 means we have removed 100% of our emissions with durable carbon removal from 2022 by purchasing 3,711 tonnes of durable biochar removals. (More on where we’ve bought our biochar from our Statement of Fact on the Tide website.)
This puts Tide into a forward thinking and action-oriented group of businesses, and places us in the top 20 carbon removal buyers in the world. You can go to the CDR.fyi registry, an open registry on high-permanence carbon removal for more information.*
We’re proud to say this makes Tide the first fintech globally to do this.
2022 was only the beginning. We commit to purchasing durable removals for our carbon emissions every year going forward.
What are carbon removals and why are they part of the solution?
Climate experts widely agree that if we’re to keep global warming within acceptable levels, we need to pursue a two-pronged strategy. This consists of removing carbon, and reducing GHG emissions.
Otherwise, we’re heading for that catastrophic tipping point sooner than predicted. Tipping points are when heating drives temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere beyond a critical threshold, for e.g., driving the irreversible loss of Greenland’s and West Antarctic ice sheets, and leading to rising sea levels.*
This is where biochar saves the day.
Biochar is a kind of charcoal that’s produced when waste biomass is heated in a very low-oxygen environment, a process called pyrolysis.
Biochar is already used in garden and agricultural soil but its carbon sequestration* properties make it a wonder-material for fighting global warming.
During pyrolysis, the CO2 that would otherwise have been released from the burning or decomposition of biomass is locked away in a durable carbon solid for more than a century and put back into the ground at scale in an agricultural context, or even into building materials.
Biochar’s sponge-like, large surface area and slight electrical charge mean it’s good for soil and plant health, when used in a controlled manner.
The IPCC reports that biochar is one of the safest, most durable, and fastest ways to draw down carbon and store it for long periods of time.
This could be a 100 years or more.
Let’s move onto Pledge 2.
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.
By only committing to 2030, does this mean we can decelerate our carbon reduction efforts?
No, not in the slightest.
We recognise that to be truly Net Zero and to ultimately meet the standards of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), an international coalition that includes the United Nations and the WWF, we should not lose sight of wider aims to dramatically reduce our own emissions.
So we cannot stop with just durably removing carbon, we need to stop emitting it in the first place.
We’ve already started this process.
In 2022, we reduced our emissions per employee by around 10% through action like limiting long-haul flights to include a two-week minimum stay, instead of one week, as well as creating specific carbon budgets for team travel overall. We are determined to sustain this momentum and bring employee emissions down as we grow and expand.
By 2030, Tide will reduce 90% of its Scopes 1 – 3 emissions per employee to reach Net Zero. In doing so, and while the business scales revenue, we will also reduce our emissions on a per revenue basis by 97%.
To take action to reduce emissions, companies need to understand and measure where they’re sourced from in the first place. The three scopes are a way of categorising the different kinds of emissions a company creates in its own operations and value chains. We monitor our emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG), the most widely used international accounting tool and the global industry standard for measuring carbon emissions.
We are fully transparent about our Net Zero reduction journey. More on our Scopes 1 – 3 emissions in our Statement of Fact on our website.
Pledges 1 & 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 3 means we plan to roll out an initiative later in 2023 to help our Members kickstart their own journey to Net Zero using the same two-pronged approach.
Around Q4 2023, Tide will start to introduce products, features and content to enable our Members to take their own Net Zero steps.
We believe we can achieve a further 1 million tonnes of durable carbon removal (CO2e) from the atmosphere by 2030 by activating our powerful network of Member businesses in the UK and India.
This will start to make a difference – and this is only the beginning.
Stay with us on this journey.
The rationale
Carbon removals – in infancy
We are the first fintech to remove 100% of our own carbon emissions, via removals, right now.
When we started out on our journey to Net Zero we discovered the carbon removals marketplace was tiny. This is despite massive worldwide momentum in purchases of removals. In 2021-22 these purchases grew by 533%. Sector-wise banking, travel and technology lead the charge.
But, total cumulative purchase as of 2022 was less than 0.0006% of the total amount of removals needed this century by 2050.
This minute percentage of 0.0006% points to a lack of a real carbon removal marketplace. Rather, a number of participants, like Tide, are attempting to kickstart carbon removal purchase to create a market. Tide’s purchases are a signal to others to do the same. Collective purchasing power will create a supply side marketplace that makes it easy to remove carbon now, and not by 2030, and help prevent our planet from warming.
We’re raising the bar. To be clear, we also want others to take similar action.
Why not trees?
Much is to be said for afforestation, but planting trees does not durably remove carbon and therefore does not meet Net Zero standards.
The SBTi, a voluntary project organised by several environmental and international organisations including the United Nations, is clear that only permanent carbon removal methods count towards Net Zero.
While afforestation is a great solution that absorbs carbon dioxide, the risk of reversal is high, as we’ve seen with increasing wildfires and forestry practices.
With this in mind, we turned to carbon removals as an immediate solution to remove 100% of our emissions now.
Actions speak louder than words
We know that there is huge controversy around Net Zero pledges. At Tide we are committed to doing the right thing. We will publish data regularly and our work is assured by independent assurance partners. More on this in our Statement of Fact on our website.
We won’t be put off by endless discussions about definitions and standards. We wanted to take action now, while recognising not everyone will agree with our approach.
Tide has always been an agile business and we have taken this cultural DNA to our behaviour around Net Zero. We will adjust our approach as we learn, never forgetting what is at stake: a contribution to saving our planet.
And to cap off, we are the first fintech to remove 100% of our own carbon emissions, via removals, now.
We feel privileged to have been able to achieve this and set an example. As such we are committed to use our full influence and position in the market in the fight to mitigate climate change.
