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Ahead of an SBN Masterclass event in March, Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey offers his top tips about communicating sustainability effectively, adding to advice from John Berry, Gabrielle Pritchard, Albert Bifet and Laura Cibilich.
NZBusiness Magazine talked to experts about communicating sustainability and the top tips were:
As Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey says, it's important to frame sustainability as an opportunity rather than a sacrifice. Focus on the benefits for business alongside environmental impact.
“Unlike a lot of environmental NGOs, we like to talk about substitution rather than sacrifice and we tend to put the economics ahead of the emissions, because when it comes down to it, that’s what most people care about. We are positive, pragmatic and transparent and we try to communicate our data in ways that everyday New Zealanders will understand by using analogies, comparisons and infographics.
“We don’t like to demonise fossil fuels as they have been central to human progress and instead we talk about the arrival of a better, cheaper, cleaner energy source that is now taking over. We prefer to focus on how the future could be better; we show that individuals have more agency than they might think; and we use personal stories of those who have already electrified to speed up the ‘neighbourhood effect’.”
The Sustainable Business Network's Communicating Sustainability Masterclass is on 25 March at AUT. Get your tickets here!
Financial commentator Frances Cook uses her own story to show that that an investment in solar and an EV significantly outperforms the stock market and fellow number cruncher Nadine Higgins says that if you do it right, EVs are cheaper to run and own; EV sales have climbed to their highest level since 2022 and are closing in on 2023's numbers and Go Rentals has just invested $2.3 million in some new Tesla Model Y Premiums; the gap between energy costs of diesel vans and utes and electric vans and utes is absolutely massive; solar is also going off right now, with one installer in Otago 448% above their sales target in March; Lightforce has gone back to the Barretts with a new TV ad; Wellington mayor Andrew Little explains its electrification strategy and Hutt City Council shares data showing how its fleet has gone from dirty Toyotas to cleaner EVs; Shenzen in China has electrified its public transport and taxis and that's come with big benefits - and some challenges; and a very simple illustration of the LNG terminal.
Read moreDownloadAs Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
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