Speakers

Jo Sutherland is managing director of Magenta Associates, an employee-owned, B Corp certified communications consultancy specialising in the built environment. With over 15 years’ experience in strategic PR and marketing, Jo is passionate about helping organisations find their voice and share their stories. A thought leader on the intersection of AI, ethics and communications, she blends creativity with critical thinking to deliver effective communications. Jo is currently undertaking a master’s in AI, Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge, where she is exploring how emerging technologies are reshaping the media landscape and public trust.

What developments are you most excited about right now in business net-zero initiatives?

The shift from intent to action. For a long time, sustainability in this sector was arguably a communications exercise – aspirational commitments, ESG reports, and so on. What we're seeing now, across the clients and organisations we work with at least, is a move towards genuine operational rigour. AI-enabled carbon auditing, granular building physics data, real-time energy monitoring… well, "these are a few of our favourite things” (apols for the earworm).

Seriously, though, these aren't lighthouse projects anymore. They’re becoming baseline expectations, thanks to those lighting the way. The organisations getting this right are treating carbon as a financial liability that needs active management, not a narrative to be managed (or manipulated!) at year-end. Words must now be backed by action. Those who are first in the net-zero race will be first in the market one, too. This shift is particularly exciting (and meaningful) for the Magenta team. Being an employee-owned B Corp means our interests are directly tied to the success of organisations that are moving the needle on decarbonisation.

Your one big thing the industry needs to hear?

There's a persistent habit in this sector (and in others) of opting for the visible or immediate fixes - solar panels, headline-worthy ‘net zero by 20XX’ aspirations, and the stuff that photographs well.

Don’t get me wrong, celebrating the easier wins can help build momentum to tackle the more challenging things. But we need more than that. Plus, you cannot PR your way out of a poorly performing building envelope. The clients we support with their comms strategies, who are genuinely ahead of the curve, understand the foundations of sustainable building design and management, from analysing thermal performance to identifying and addressing heat loss. Get those right and you build assets that will actually hold their value, while reducing the load on your mechanical systems and lowering your capital expenditure. It’s a no brainer, really. Sustainability that's bolted on rather than embedded from the get-go is a communications and reputational risk as much as an operational one. Don’t take that risk.

A myth you'd like to bust?

That data centres are inherently at odds with net-zero. It is a lazy framing. While there is no denying they are energy-intensive, with approximately 100 new-build data centres currently in the UK pipeline, the conversation needs to move beyond whether we should build them to how we build them well. The organisations we work with are already using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling and self-cooling architectures, and all sorts of other clever methods, to reduce energy demand through design choices alone. By a whopping 40% in one case. We’ve even heard an example where specifying PV on-site reduced the load on the grid by 50%. Data infrastructure is not going away anytime soon. The sector needs to stop being defensive and start making the technical case for high-performance design more confidently. That is where the conversation needs to go.