Save the date: 22 April to 6 May 2024
This is our invitation to you, to join the second Funds Industry Climate Challenge, and make it even bigger and better than our successful initiative in 2023.
“Everyone in the funds industry has a central role to play in the fight against climate change.”
With that motto, the Green Team Network launched, the first ever Climate Challenge for the Irish Funds industry. The aim of the Climate Challenge was to inspire and educate staff from the participating companies, by highlighting and celebrating the many small steps that each of us can take, in our daily lives, to reduce our carbon footprints.
The Funds Industry Climate Challenge, organised in partnership with environmental charity Global Action Plan (GAP) and powered by the Ducky online platform, enabled teams of employees to record everyday climate friendly actions, and see their actions converted into measurable savings of their greenhouse gas emissions.
We had 23 teams participate from all different sectors in the funds industry. The sectors included Accounting, Asset Manager, Fund Administration, Industry Bodies, Legal, Management Company, Regulatory Technology and INEDs.
And we are hoping that the 2024 Funds Industry Climate Challenge will be even bigger and better!
What made the Challenge unique
The Funds Industry Climate Challenge 2023 was team based, to emphasise the social and inclusive nature of the competition but also to reflect insights from GAP’s behaviour change work which has shown the importance of peer support;
The Climate Challenge took the form of a friendly competition, with real-time leaderboards and prizes for the winners, to provide a focus and motivation, and to combine real life carbon impact with an entertaining and educational component;
The Climate Challenge was public, to allow participating companies to use the competition not only as a means to motivate and engage staff, but also to demonstrate to the outside world that their commitment to sustainability takes many forms;
The Climate Challenge was informative, with online micro-learning modules and pointers for further learning, to encourage participants to start a conversation about the potential for reducing or changing consumption. The aim was to inspire participants to realise the impact of their daily habits, and to try out alternative behaviour patterns in a non-threatening way.
The Results
Over a 12-day period, over 2,300 participants in the sector logged more than 200,000 small climate smart actions, resulting in savings of 173 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
This is equivalent to 87 diesel cars driving for a whole year, or not using the total amount of energy consumed by 33 households during an entire year. If everyone in Ireland made the same lifestyle changes as the Climate Challenge participants, and kept up their new habits for the entire year, we would have reduced Ireland’s carbon emissions by 27%!
The overall winners of the inaugural Funds Industry Climate Challenge was the team at Kroll. The winners of the Professional Services Firm category was the team at PwC, and the winners in the Service Provider category were IQ-EQ. The prize in the Managers category went to the team at Gemini Capital Management while the inaugural “Scope Me” award went to the staff at McCann Fitzgerald.
There were also special awards for outstanding performances by individuals from across the sector. The Climate Champions that received awards were Sinead Durkan from MUFG Investor Services, Sabina Cotter from McCann Fitzgerald, and Saloni Mantri from Kroll.
Photo: Winners of the Funds Industry Climate Challenge with their awards, at the 2023 Irish Funds Industry Association conference.
The feedback
After the Challenge, every participating company was sent feedback forms and the team at Global Action Plan organised debriefing sessions with 13 of the participating companies.
The conclusion? The Challenge was an overwhelming success. All of the companies interviewed said they would recommend the Funds Industry Climate Challenge to others.
The challenge also won an award at the All-Ireland Sustainability Awards this year for the stakeholder engagement initiative of the year.
What’s Next?
The Green Team Network is planning the 2nd Edition of Funds Industry Climate Challenge in 2024.
The Challenge will begin on Earth Day, Monday 22 April 2024, and run for a 2-week period. We want to double the number of companies participating, so please get involved. We are also looking for sponsors for the challenge so please let us know if you are interested.
Costs for the challenge for 2024 are:
Sponsor - €10,000
Participant
1 to 50 employees - €1,500
51 - 500 employees - €1,900
500+ employess - €3,100
All proceeds go to GAP for the running of the challenge and any proceeds left over will be used to fund GAPs schools and underprivlidge programs.
Register your companies interest at info@greenteamnetwork.ie.