Carbon and biodiversity considerations in business cases

Net Zero Go says:

This guide provides a practical framework for embedding carbon and biodiversity into project development, appraisal, and governance. It helps organisations assess impact, determine proportionality, evaluate options, and integrate environmental considerations throughout the business case process. The guidance covers both carbon and biodiversity, with clear steps for materiality testing, option appraisal, risk management, and decision-making.

For Welsh local authorities, the value is in making Net Zero and nature recovery objectives part of everyday project decisions rather than an afterthought. It offers a proportionate approach that supports compliance, strengthens business cases, improves procurement outcomes, and helps officers identify lower-carbon, biodiversity-positive options early, reducing risk, cost, and future retrofit requirements.

Carbon and biodiversity considerations in business cases

This guidance has been produced by Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) and Ambition North Wales (ANW).

It has been designed for the public sector organisations in Wales, specifically:

Those responsible for designing, delivering, and approving projects, including Senior Responsible
Owners (SROs), project directors, project managers, and business case practitioners and reviewers.
Senior management, scrutiny committees, and boards with responsibility for approving projects and
business cases – for example, directors of finance, planning, and procurement, and others with
responsibility for operational aspects.
Consultants undertaking business cases on behalf of the public bodies and for the corresponding
officers to check, challenge, and assess consultants’ output as an intelligent client.

The document serves as a strategic guide and a practical tool for anyone with responsibility for designing, delivery, approving, and scrutinising projects to ensure that carbon and biodiversity is considered as part of the development of any project.

It brings together key frameworks, planning logic, industry recognised methodologies and best practice with the aim of ensuring that carbon and biodiversity is considered consistently and as early as possible in the project development lifecycle.

For both carbon and biodiversity, the document is divided into the following steps of project planning:

Step 1: Prepare
Step 2: Materiality assessment (impact)
Step 3: Proportionality assessment (project value)
Step 4a: Impact assessment for lower-value business cases
Step 4b: Impact assessment for higher-value business cases
Best practice for decision-making

This guidance is designed for projects of various sizes or development of strategies, and for organisations with varying degrees of understanding for carbon and biodiversity. The main aim of this guidance is to enable project managers and decision-makers to consider carbon and biodiversity consistently and as early as possible in the project development lifecycle.

Carbon and biodiversity considerations in business cases

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