Oxford: ClimateCare receives Queen’s Award for Enterprise

ClimateCare based in Oxford has been named as winner of a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, the UK’s highest accolade for business success, and hopes this acknowledgement will encourage new partners to work with it in order to tackle climate change and support sustainable development.
The company wins a Sustainable Development Award for outstanding contributions to poverty alleviation and tackling climate change. Its work with influential partners to develop and structure finance for integrated climate and development projects delivers environmental, health, economic and social benefits.

To date, the company has helped reduce over 16.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and improve the lives of more than six million people. For example, it has helped distribute over a million efficient cookstoves, provide 4.5 million people with safe water and supported the creation of a market for treadle pumps for crop irrigation which increase yields and disposable incomes for farmers.

ClimateCare CEO Edward Hanrahan said: “I am delighted that ClimateCare has received such a prestigious award. As the scientific evidence for climate change compels ever-more urgent action, it’s timely that the Queen’s Awards have recognised a specialised sustainability practitioner.

“There is increasing acceptance about the need for large-scale action to reduce global emissions. This, combined with the realisation that the least developed countries are already beginning to suffer from the effects of climate change, mean that it makes absolute sense to focus on projects that deliver both climate and development outcomes.

“I hope that such a positive endorsement about the effectiveness of our integrated climate and development approach will encourage more organisations to support our work, either through initial investment into projects, or to take full responsibility for their own climate impacts by purchasing the resulting carbon credits to provide ongoing finance steams for such projects.”

Partnership is central to ClimateCare’s approach and, since it was founded in 1997, it has brought together a variety of diverse organisations including international governments, NGOs, investors and businesses, to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. ClimateCare’s forward thinking and pioneering supporters include Aviva, The Co-operative, Jaguar Land Rover, The Swedish Energy Agency and Forum for the Future, to name but a few.

“Investing in high-quality carbon and development projects, like those that ClimateCare offers, should be an essential part of the CSR and carbon management strategy of every responsible business,” said Jonathan Porritt, founder, Forum for the Future. “I hope this award helps raise awareness among the international business and development communities about the real and measurable value that ClimateCare’s approach can deliver.”

Jonathan Garrett, CSR director, Jaguar Land Rover, said: "Jaguar Land Rover has supported ClimateCare's integrated approach to protecting the environment and improving lives since 2007. Using carbon finance for development makes simple, business sense and going forward, ClimateCare will help us both offset our manufacturing emissions and deliver against our target, to create opportunities for 12 million people around the world by 2020."