Back in November 2021 Dr Bragagni attended the COP26 and was inspired by the fact that an increasing number of businesses recognised the commercial and moral imperative of playing their part to tackle climate change and have taken on net zero emissions targets.
At the same time, Dr Bragagni realised that it is important that there is a strong baseline and level playing field in place that allows investors, businesses, consumers and the public to independently assess the credibility of different commitments and the progress that individual businesses are making to meet them.
As a member of IEC MSB and CEO of Tratos UK Ltd, he stressed the point that IEC must listen to the growing business demand for low carbon industrial products through initiatives, including such as product standards.
IEC must increase its ambition in this area and take action to drive positive change among the electrotechnical industry members to boost their investment in energy efficiency and deliver the skills programmes required to make the most of this opportunity in line with the best practices and standards available.
Dr Bragagni suggested the decarbonisation of the electrotechnical industry must be a priority of the IEC and creating an IEC Carbon Footprint Certification program will be the first thing aspiring to achieve. At present, many companies are calculating emissions from their own places of business and distribution activities under a variety of methods and taking steps to reduce emissions on that basis. However, most efforts are being pursued by individual companies, and it is necessary to provide support for efforts involving collaboration by a variety of companies.
In the January 2022 meeting, the IEC MSB endorsed Dr Bragagni’s proposal for the creation of a Task Force to investigate the scope and necessary resources that could be required for the formation of a CO2 Emissions Certificate Program for the IEC.
The task force concluded its work in May and its report with recommendations was approved by the IEC MSB meeting in Geneva in June 2022. The IEC Standardisation Management Board (SMB) and the Conformity Assessment Board (CAB) will now assess the report and determine what would be the next steps to implement the Program as it has identified it as a future work priority. The CO2 Emissions Certificate Program proposed by Dr Bragagni will provide a “unique selling proposition” for the IEC amidst the global attempts to combat climate change, given the organisation’s specific expertise and know-how among its thousands of experts worldwide.