As a large business, we have many incentives to reduce our carbon emissions, including for example, legislation like the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC EES). We can also play a role in helping Government to meet tough carbon reduction targets for Britain. Energy efficiency makes good commercial sense, saving us money that can be reinvested into the railway and helping to build our reputation as a responsible company.
Carbon
Our Corporate Responsibility Group have established six priority areas of focus for the coming year in terms of sustainability. One of these is carbon, where we intend to develop a strategy to reduce our carbon impact, both as a company (our “non-traction emissions”, covered here) and as part of the wider rail industry (for more information on this, please see the section of this report on rail industry carbon emissions).
We will be developing long term strategies for each of the six priority areas over the coming 12 months and will report fully on our progress in our next report.
- Carbon
- Climate change adaptation
- Waste
- Diversity
- Accessibility
- Biodiversity, ecology and land use
Carbon footprint
In 2010/11, our scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprint (scopes defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol) decreased by 0.82 per cent compared to the last year, falling to 309,932.61 tCO2e (2009/10: 312,505.73 tCO2e). This was mainly due to a reduction in diesel fuel used for our road vehicle fleet.
In previous years we have also reported our carbon footprint excluding staff business travel and calor gas in order to make a like-for-like comparison with our 2006/07 baseline. On this measure, our carbon footprint has reduced by 5.22 per cent, going from 322,500.84 t CO2e in 2006/07 to 305,660.69 t CO2e in 2010/11.
Utilities management
Carbon emissions from non-traction electricity and gas use make up just over 80 per cent of our carbon footprint. As part of our carbon reduction efforts, during 2010/11 we continued the implementation of our utilities strategy. This strategy covers electricity, water and gas. Our aim is to improve the accuracy of our consumption data (through increased metering and improved asset knowledge); to implement targeted energy efficiency initiatives; and to trial self-generated energy where feasible.
A key part of this strategy is to implement improved electricity and gas metering. In 2010/11, we began our national roll-out of over 5,400 smart electricity meters that will provide us with automatic half-hourly energy use data across all of our sites that do not already have this. This will be completed by March 2012. More accurate data will allow us to better forecast future consumption, to target reductions in our consumption, and to better monitor performance against these targets. It will also support our reporting into the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.
In 2010/11, we also began to develop a proposal for sub-metering, particularly at sites that we share with third parties, such as with retailers at our managed stations. This will give us more detailed knowledge so that we can further target reductions in consumption.
Energy surveys
In late 2009, we commissioned surveys to identify energy saving measures at our managed stations, six of our maintenance depots, and Westwood, our leadership development centre. We have not yet implemented the measures recommended in the surveys, but work is ongoing to review the feasibility of different energy saving improvements across our building portfolio.
BREEAM and Ceequal
Three workshops were held in June and July 2010 to educate around 100 of our project managers, environment managers, project sponsors and engineers about environmental assessment codes for new buildings such as BREEAM and Ceequal. We are already using these for some of our new buildings, including our National Centre office in Milton Keynes, and are looking at how this type of code might inform our approach to design and construction in the longer term.
Fleet emissions
In 2010/11, our road fleet emissions made up 18 per cent (2009/10: 20 per cent) of our overall carbon footprint (excluding staff travel by public transport). This includes emissions from diesel, petrol and LPG used in road vehicles. We will report on our efforts to reduce carbon emissions from our road fleet in our next report.