Our Vision
A world in which everyone lives well, in just and resilient communities, within the boundaries of a liveable planet.
Our Mission
To end overconsumption and the overshoot of Earth's planetary boundaries, to prevent ecological collapse and human suffering. We work to see sufficiency-first and resilience approaches adopted in policy and practice, at the household, community, business and governmental levels.
Our Structure
GoZero and the GoZero Foundation are independent organisations that work together to deliver the shared vision and mission above. GoZero operates and improves the platform. The GoZero Foundation, which is a registered charitable trust, coordinates the community work through GoZero Teams.
Why "GoZero"
GoZero was set up to find ways to accelerate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to Zero.
Climate change, it turns out, is only one symptom of a deeper, systemic crisis driven by overconsumption and resource depletion. This has resulted in humanity breaching seven of the nine ecological planetary boundaries, including the climate, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, chemical flows and pollutants such as microplastics. This is known as overshoot, and "GoZero" now expresses our aim to reduce overshoot of all planetary boundaries to Zero.
We must also address the economic and social impacts of overshoot, by finding approaches that reduce exposure to catastrophic risk, inequity and poverty to Zero. No small challenge.
Sufficiency - living well within planetary boundaries - combined with community-wealth building and universal access to basic services, provides a pathway to achieving this complex transformation. GoZero Teams are how we travel down that pathway together.
Addressing Strategic Failure
Globally, we are failing to take effective climate action. Fossil fuel consumption and emissions hit record highs in 2025. Emission reduction targets are being abandoned by large corporations. Cities are far behind on meeting their targets and are now admitting that they will not reach them. Countries may follow too, soon. Many key actors appear to be giving up, because the "solutions" they have been trying have not been delivering.
GoZero has been working to understand why this is and what can be done differently. The good news is that there is a system-level strategic error that explains why we haven't seen progress: we have been ignoring a key part of climate science, and this can be corrected.
Sufficiency-First
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies three main ways that we can reduce emissions: Sufficiency, Efficiency and Renewables. Sufficiency, which has the potential to deliver 40% to 70% emissions reductions, is defined as "a set of policy measures and daily practices that avoid demand for energy, materials, land, and water while delivering human well-being for all within planetary boundaries."
Importantly, sufficiency measures must be used first - before efficiency and renewables - for these to deliver real impact. But we have been doing things back to front, starting with efficiency and renewables, when the science tells us that we must start with sufficiency. This is because gains made by efficiency and renewables get eaten up by growth and the rebound effect (see more on this below).
Efficiency works through marginal technological improvements that allow businesses to reduce emissions per unit, but total emissions continue to grow as demand grows. Renewable energy and electrification technologies allow for a more efficient use of fossil fuels, but total emissions continue to grow as demand increases. Technological efficiency and renewables have significant resource requirements themselves, and ignore planetary boundaries. Demand-side sufficiency, the IPCC's highest-potential lever for climate mitigation, is the only pathway to reduce the overshoot of all planetary boundaries.
Globally, while trillions of dollars have been invested in efficiency technologies and renewable energy infrastructure, sufficiency measures have hardly received any investment or attention. The reason is structural: sufficiency has no product to sell, no return to capture, no business model to fund. We have allowed market considerations to dictate our actions. This is a system-level strategic error. GoZero is working to innovate in the sufficiency space, to test approaches that deliver authentic progress, while addressing the key issues below.
Key issues
Rebound: The rebound effect describes what happens when efficiency improvements or cost savings lead to increased consumption that partially or fully eats up the original gain. When manufacturing becomes more energy-efficient, the cost of production falls, prices drop, demand rises, and overall output increases. The efficiency gain is absorbed by growth.
Renewables face a similar problem. Cheaper solar and wind energy reduces the cost of electricity. Lower energy costs stimulate economic activity and consumption. The emissions intensity of each unit of energy falls, but the total amount of energy consumed grows, and if that growth is fast enough, absolute emissions can still rise even as the grid gets greener. This is also true at the household level. The push for home electrification uses cost savings as the prime motivator, but these savings create a rebound effect leading to increased consumption of goods and services, erasing any climate gains. Investment in individual solutions, from rooftop solar to electric vehicles, disproportionately benefits those with the capital to access them, while leaving lower-income households and renters behind.
Coordination: Conventional responses treat the problem as a series of consumer choices to be optimised rather than a systemic coordination failure to be addressed collectively. They ask people to act alone, in private, against their immediate interests, in a system that offers no coordination mechanism and no shared benefit. The failure of individual approaches is not evidence that people are apathetic or selfish. It is evidence of the wrong theory of change. People are not the problem. The absence of coordination mechanisms is the problem, and is where GoZero focuses its work.
Our Approach
The framework that makes sense of what our response needs to achieve is Doughnut Economics, developed by economist Kate Raworth. The doughnut's outer ring is the ecological ceiling; the planetary boundaries we must not exceed. Its inner ring is the social foundation: the minimum conditions of human wellbeing that no one should fall below, including food, energy, housing, health, and democratic voice. The goal is to live in the safe and just space between them. GoZero's work addresses both boundaries simultaneously, reducing ecological overshoot through sufficiency, and strengthening the social foundation through community resilience and shared infrastructure.
Our work starts from the premise that the most effective responses to the interlocking crises we face are collective: sufficiency practised together rather than alone; community wealth-building that keeps economic resources circulating locally rather than extracted by distant supply chains; care economies that reduce total consumption while strengthening social connection; and investment in local businesses and shared infrastructure that build stronger, smaller, more resilient local economies, that can provide access to basic essentials for all.
Sufficiency, which involves consuming less, not just consuming differently, sits at the heart of this. Sufficiency is also the most direct response to cost-of-living pressure, supply chain fragility and the concentration of economic power that leaves communities without resilience.
Unlike efficiency and renewables-first approaches, sufficiency practised collectively addresses the rebound effect directly: when savings flow into shared community systems rather than further personal consumption, the benefits compound rather than cancel out.
Shared systems, community wealth building and democratic participation are the most rational investments available against the full range of ecological, economic, security and social pressures that communities face.
Underpinning all of this is what GoZero calls the resource lens: a way of evaluating choices, from household decisions to community infrastructure to national policy, by asking which systems reduce dependency on complex supply chains and depleting resources, which can be built and maintained using local skills and materials, and which remain viable as energy and materials become more constrained. This lens distinguishes genuine resilience from solutions that simply substitute one form of market dependency for another. It is the analytical framework that guides GoZero's work at every scale, and the basis on which GoZero advocates for infrastructure and procurement decisions that are coherent with the world we are moving into, rather than optimised for a world that is passing.
GoZero Teams
At the core of our work are GoZero Teams: small groups of at least four people, typically neighbours, colleagues, or friends, who connect regularly to practise sufficiency, map their community's resilience needs, and build the shared capacity to act collectively. Teams are supported by GoZero's community weavers, who are organisers embedded in specific geographic areas whose job is facilitation and capacity building.
As teams develop, they can choose how far they want to take their collective action, from household sufficiency and cost reduction, to community wealth building and local resilience, to deliberative advocacy for the systems change that makes sufficiency easier for everyone. GoZero is here to support teams at every stage of that journey.
The entry point is practical and immediate: reducing household costs, building local resilience, connecting with neighbours. The deeper theory of change is shared openly with those who want to engage with it, but it is not the front door.
The Sufficiency Savings Estimator
GoZero has developed a basic Sufficiency Savings Estimator that allows users to find ways to make savings by reducing consumption in line with sufficiency practices. We will use this with GoZero Teams to test and refine the data and design, in order to promote the adoption of sufficiency at scale. The Estimator has inbuilt mechanisms to counter the rebound effect, by channelling any discretionary income that users generate towards community resilience and wealth building.
Achieving authentic progress
Coordination over individual action
Overconsumption is a coordination failure, not a moral failing. GoZero builds the coordination mechanisms, at the scale of the street, the suburb, and the city, that change the incentive structure for everyone simultaneously. The target is the system, not the individual.
Community over platform
Online tools alone cannot create the conditions for sustained behaviour change. GoZero Teams are deliberately designed around the criteria that evidence shows are necessary for complex social change to take hold: small, locally embedded groups with overlapping relationships, regular in-person contact, and mutual accountability.
Democratic legitimacy
GoZero creates the infrastructure that makes genuine community advocacy possible. The ongoing deliberation within GoZero Teams - mapping risks, sharing knowledge, developing collective positions - functions as a continuous citizens' assembly at the neighbourhood level: community members setting the agenda and owning the conclusions. When teams engage directly with local decision-makers, they bring the legitimacy of real deliberation behind them. GoZero holds the space in which that democratic process can develop.
Equity by design
Sufficiency does not require capital to unlock. Unlike electrification programmes that are structurally unavailable to those without savings or home ownership, sufficiency practices are accessible to renters, lower-income households, and the communities that most need relief from cost of living pressure. GoZero's model is designed to work for everyone, not just those already well-placed to benefit.
Our Values
Integrity
We will do what is right, even when it is not easy. Our commitment to transparency, accountability and governance, notably in how we measure progress, is the foundation of trust that we build with our members, communities, businesses and partners.
Independence
Independence allows us to make decisions that prioritise the needs of our planet and our communities. We are data-informed and are not beholden to any political agenda or industry. Our independence allows us to be nimble and proactive to changing circumstances, and to operate guided by ethics, fairness and equality.
Collaboration
Real change starts when we come together. We believe that all actors engaged in creating positive change towards systems with people and planet at their heart, are our friends and allies. Creating a secure, resilient, sufficient future is only possible by building a community of people and organisations with shared goals and aligned interests, and fostering cooperation and participation among its members. We want you to join us to create this future, together.