Global warming is upon us, and as a society it is more important than ever, to endeavour to reduce our carbon footprint in order to mitigate the impact upon the environment as a consequence of the rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the age of the industrial revolution. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) is a framework used to assess an organisation’s business practices and performance on various sustainability and ethical issues. It provides a way to measure business risks and opportunities in those areas; reducing the company’s carbon footprint is not only a benchmark set by government, but also could represent an opportunity to reduce energy bills and formulate other income streams.

This is an area which will affect organisations which have high energy requirements, such as steel producers, metal finishers, cement manufacturers and kiln operators. Additionally, industries which use bulk material processes, eg, cereal or root crop processors within the agricultural industry who also have high energy processing requirements, can consider carbon abatement technologies to help achieve their goals. There is no silver bullet here, but complementary technologies will need to run side by side.