The Climate Change Law covers regulations that affect your company's strategy, its future, and essentially the way you do business.
In this article, we will look at the legal obligations under the Climate Change Law, which addresses a critical process for both your company and our planet, and how your company can align with it.
Climate Change Law: A Quick Overview
Understanding the Climate Change Law
The law defines the legal frameworks needed to meet sustainable development goals. Its overall purpose is to limit the impact of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It aims to reach the international agreements required to keep global warming to 1.5°C, first minimizing the impact of climate change and then driving it toward net zero.
How Did It Start?
By ratifying the Paris Agreement, Turkey joined international cooperation and formalized its commitment to fighting climate change. The country has since taken further steps through its National Climate Change Action Plan, which sets out emission reduction and climate adaptation strategies. In this article, we explain how this agreement and plan change corporate policies.
Globally, the European Green Deal is the European Union's policy package aimed at making Europe a climate-neutral continent, with policy measures and targets across areas such as environment, climate, economy, energy, agriculture, transport, industry, and innovation. In the United States, a range of federal and state-level laws and regulations support clean energy and climate change efforts.
Key Highlights
Leading countries in this area set time-bound emission reduction targets that cover every level of society, from individuals — the smallest building blocks of society — to the companies where all economic activity happens. These targets aren't just set; they're committed to on the international stage. These countries create incentives for the shift to renewable energy, prioritize companies and industries in this area, enable carbon emission trading through carbon markets, lay the foundation for a carbon tax through carbon pricing, and, in effect, penalize organizations that emit heavily.
The Goal of Turkey's Climate Change Law
Turkey's Climate Change Law is expected to come into force in 2024. The law brings together Turkey's climate change and Green Deal alignment work, aiming to drive green transformation in Turkey — particularly in energy — and reach a "net zero" emissions target by 2053. It also includes measures such as enhancing and expanding sinks led by forests, establishing an emissions trading system, using revenue from carbon pricing mechanisms to support industry in clean production and green investments, ensuring a just transition, and including disadvantaged groups in the process.
What Does This Mean for Your Company?
When we examine company responsibilities, standards-compliant reporting will create significant workload. Companies will face greater legal responsibility when it comes to emission reduction and sustainability targets. In this demanding process, they will need sustainability calculations, consultants, and platforms, and then need to plan reduction steps.
Complying with the Climate Change Law means investing in new technologies and shifting to renewable energy sources. This may require high upfront costs. Still, these investments lower costs over the long run. Cost and investment plans are among the first plans that must be updated under current laws.
Significant changes await in your operational processes. Operational processes cover everything from a product's manufacturing to its packaging, supply chain, and delivery to the end user. Every step in these processes must first be analyzed in depth and reported in line with standards — this is especially mandatory for companies with corporate customers.
Aligning with this global order is essential. Otherwise, you face significant reputational damage and financial liabilities. To avoid this, it's important to stay well informed about the outcomes of international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement and to closely follow your country's steps in this area.
Consumers are growing more aware, acting more socially and more with the future in mind. Market and consumer behavior is shifting. Companies will need to reshape their products and services to meet this changing demand. For example, changes such as sustainable products, recyclable packaging, and environmentally friendly design are becoming increasingly important.
What Does CarbonSmart Do?
We provide technology solutions that help you manage and reduce your carbon footprint in a way that aligns with regulatory requirements and standards.
To learn more about our solutions, contact us.
